Kaufman County
Kaufman, Kaufman County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Created February 26, 1848; organized August 7, 1848; named in honor of David Spangler Kaufman 1812-1851; came to Texas in 1837 and located at Nacogdoches; member of the Texas Congress 1839-1845; Member of the United States Congress. Kaufman, the County Seat
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Created and organized in 1848 in the first years of Texas statehood, this county took the name of David Spangler Kaufman, a lawyer who reached Nacogdoches in 1837 and rose through the Congress of the Republic of Texas before winning a seat in the U.S. Congress. The marker stands in the county seat that also bears his name, a common frontier practice of anchoring a new county's identity to a favorite son. Kaufman's short life spanned the arc from independent republic to American state.
Why it matters
County-naming honors like this one map the early political geography of Texas onto the men who carried it from republic to statehood.
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Related people
- · David Spangler Kaufman
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Mrs. William P. King
Kaufman, TX
Frances A. King came to the Republic of Texas alongside her husband, founder of King's Fort in 1840, and pioneered on the frontier with notable courage. After his death in 1846 she—by then Mrs. Tabor—campaigned to make Kingsborough the seat of the newly organized Kaufman County and won. In April 1851 she deeded 75 acres for the townsite and a matching timber tract to the county commissioners, and the fort's settlement grew into the town that shares the county's name.
Colonel Isham Chisum
Kaufman, TX
Isham Chisum was among Kaufman County's leading early citizens, representing it at the Texas Secession Convention in early 1861. He then rode with Col. Tom Green's Confederate cavalry in the New Mexico campaign and, as colonel of the 2nd Partisan Rangers in Walker's Division, fought at Mansfield and Pleasant Hill during the 1864 Red River Campaign that turned back a Federal invasion of Texas. He was a cousin of trailblazers Jesse Chisholm and cattle baron John Simpson Chisum.
Church of Our Merciful Saviour
Kaufman, TX
This Rural Gothic sanctuary grew from an Episcopal parish formed in Kaufman in 1883. With a site given in 1898 and construction led in 1909 by Mr. and Mrs. Woodson Nash, the church was consecrated that May by the Rt. Rev. A. C. Garrett, first bishop of the Missionary District of Northern Texas. It was named a Recorded Texas Historic Landmark in 1967.
First United Methodist Church
Kaufman, TX
Organized in 1845 as a Methodist Episcopal congregation in the town then called Kingsborough—soon renamed Kaufman—this church took root just as Texas joined the Union. From a first building in 1857 to a white-frame steepled sanctuary in 1876 and a substantial brick church in 1909, its successive buildings chart the growth of a North Texas county seat. Each stage was led by a named circuit-era pastor.