Kahn Saloon
Jefferson, Marion County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Built during the early 1860s, this structure served as a boarding house and as a mercantile before opening as the Kahn Saloon about 1900. Temperance movement leader Carrie Nation was denied entrance here during one of her campaigns through Texas. Jefferson native Marion Try Slaughter launched his career as country music singer Vernon Dalhart at the Kahn Saloon. The popular gathering place was closed after local prohibitionists won a 1907 election. Since that time, the building has been used for a variety of purposes, including a newspaper office, lodge building, furniture store, and funeral home.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Built in the early 1860s as a boarding house and mercantile, this Jefferson landmark became the Kahn Saloon around 1900, a lively gathering place in a busy East Texas river town. Temperance crusader Carrie Nation was turned away at its door during a Texas campaign, and young Marion Try Slaughter — later famous as country recording pioneer Vernon Dalhart — got an early start singing here. Local prohibitionists shuttered the saloon after an 1907 election, and the building went on to serve as a newspaper office, lodge, furniture store, and funeral home.
Why it matters
The saloon captures the collision of frontier leisure, the national temperance movement, and the birth of recorded country music all under one Texas roof.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Carrie Nation
- · Vernon Dalhart
- · Marion Try Slaughter
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Alice Emmert Home
Jefferson, TX
Built about 1868 in the late Greek Revival style and later dressed with Victorian details, this Jefferson home was purchased in 1898 by Alice Emmert, one of the first women elected to public office in Texas. She served as county superintendent of education from 1908 to 1920. In a further brush with history, young Claudia Taylor—the future Lady Bird Johnson—boarded here from 1924 to 1926 while attending school.
The Figures House
Jefferson, TX
This modest Greek Revival cottage went up in the 1850s for Bartholomew Figures, a local innkeeper, and passed through a long line of short-term owners over more than a century. Among them was dressmaker Mary Eglentine Whitfield, who lived here from 1883 to 1928, and finally artist Tommie Wurtsbaugh Glick, who restored the house after buying it in 1970. It was recorded as a Texas Historic Landmark in 1973.
Godfrey-Singleton House
Jefferson, TX
Schoolteacher Margaret Godfrey bought this Jefferson lot in 1892 and built a Folk Victorian house trimmed with Queen Anne spindlework, though she moved away and died only a few years later. Dr. Robert Moseley acquired it in 1901, and from 1910 to 1987 the family of attorney John Singleton lived in and enlarged the home. Its decorative detailing on a simple folk form typifies the modest but ornamented houses of turn-of-the-century Texas towns.
Historic Houston Street Victorian Cottage
Jefferson, TX
This Victorian cottage stands near the ferry crossing that helped make Jefferson a booming inland river port in the mid-1800s. Its first known owners, John M. and Nancy Dollehite, took possession in 1851, and among its distinguished residents was Ernestine Sterne, who served as Jefferson's postmaster from 1872 to 1875. Katherine R. Wise, its owner since 1946, restored the home to its earlier grace.