Lex Word and the Bon Ton
Kyle, Hays County, Texas
Marker Inscription
For generations this site was the commercial and social heart of the community. Wallace Alexander "Lex" Word (1896-1982) was born in Kyle to William Alexander and Mamie (Sledge) Word, but tragically his father died two months before Lex was born. After graduating from Kyle High School in 1913 as the only male in a class of six, Lex worked in his uncle's bank in Mathis. He later attended Texas A&M College and served in World War I, managing stores in Grayburg and Huntsville upon his return to Texas. In 1926, Word moved back to Kyle and partnered with Alex Kercheville and Jack Sledge to open the Bon Ton, a general store and grocery. Initially located in the historic Masonic building, it soon moved to this location. At about the same time, Word bought out his partners. In 1929, Lex married Taylor native Louise "Bobby" Gossett (1904-2000), who came to Kyle to teach school. He expanded the store in the Great Depression, adding a feed store and hatchery at a time when many downtown businesses closed. A fatal fire here killed Cal "Big Boy" Clark in 1934, but the store was rebuilt. For decades the Bon Ton was a primary community gathering place. The Words were church and civic leaders, active in the First Baptist Church. When Kyle State Bank closed in 1932, Lex helped reorganize the town's only depository as Citizens State Bank. He also opened an adjacent implement store and helped restart the cooperative cotton gin in the 1930s. Lex and Bobby donated space in the back of the Bon Ton for a reading room that was the town's first library in the 1950s. The store retained the Bon Ton name under new ownership until fire destroyed the building in 2002. In 2006, the City of Kyle built a new city hall at this location. (2007)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
For generations this corner was the commercial and social heart of Kyle. Wallace Alexander "Lex" Word (1896–1982), a World War I veteran and hometown boy, opened the Bon Ton general store here in 1926 and soon bought out his partners. Through the Great Depression he expanded rather than retreated—adding a feed store and hatchery as other businesses failed—and helped reorganize the town's only bank when it closed in 1932. The Bon Ton even housed Kyle's first library before fire finally destroyed the building in 2002.
Why it matters
The store embodies the role of the small-town general merchant as banker, civic leader, and community anchor in Depression-era rural America.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
Kyle, in the rolling country south of Austin, was the kind of small Texas town where a single well-run store could serve as the hub of an entire community's daily life. In the early twentieth century — the Progressive era giving way to the modern age — such towns were built around a compact downtown where commerce, banking, and neighborly life all happened within a few steps of one another.
The defining trial of the era arrived with the Great Depression. When the economy collapsed after 1929, small towns everywhere watched their banks fail, their storefronts empty, and their families struggle to hang on. A town's survival often depended on a handful of stubborn, resourceful people willing to invest and build when everyone else was retrenching.
Against that backdrop, the general merchant occupied a special place. More than a shopkeeper, he was frequently a banker, a civic leader, and a neighbor who extended credit through hard seasons. In a town like Kyle, the man who ran the main store could end up holding the whole community together.
People & events
Wallace Alexander "Lex" Word was a hometown boy marked early by hardship: born in Kyle in 1896, he lost his father two months before he was even born. He graduated from Kyle High School in 1913 — the only male in a class of six — then worked in his uncle's bank, attended Texas A&M, and served in World War I before returning to Texas to manage stores.
In 1926 he came home to Kyle and, with partners Alex Kercheville and Jack Sledge, opened the Bon Ton, a general store and grocery. It began in the historic Masonic building before moving to this site, and before long Word had bought out his partners to run it himself. In 1929 he married Louise "Bobby" Gossett, a Taylor native who had come to Kyle to teach school; together the Words became pillars of the community and of the First Baptist Church.
What sets Word's story apart is what he did during the Depression. As other downtown businesses shuttered, he expanded — adding a feed store and a hatchery. When Kyle State Bank failed in 1932, he helped reorganize the town's only depository as Citizens State Bank. He opened an implement store and helped restart the cooperative cotton gin. The Bon Ton survived a fatal fire in 1934, which killed a man named Cal "Big Boy" Clark, and was rebuilt. In the 1950s the Words gave over space at the back of the store for a reading room that became Kyle's first library. The Bon Ton kept its name under later owners until fire finally destroyed the building in 2002; in 2006 the city built a new city hall on the spot.
Its place in the American story
The story of Lex Word and the Bon Ton is the story of the small-town general merchant as the indispensable figure of rural American life — a role that has all but vanished. In one man and one store you find the grocer, the feed and implement dealer, the informal banker, the civic organizer, and the patron of the town's first library. That concentration of functions was how thousands of small communities actually worked.
It is also a Depression story told from an unusual angle. The national memory of the 1930s is dominated by failure — closed banks, empty stores, foreclosed farms. Here is the counter-narrative: a merchant who met the crisis by building rather than retreating, and who helped his town keep its bank and its farm economy alive when both were in peril. Such local resilience, repeated in countless places, is a large part of how America came through those years.
And the final chapter — a community gathering place that endured for generations before fire took it, replaced by the town's own city hall — traces the long life cycle of the American Main Street. The private store that once anchored civic life gave way, in the end, to a public building serving the same purpose on the same ground.
If you visit
This corner has been the civic heart of Kyle for generations, and it still is: the site now holds the city hall, so a place that began as a private store remains a center of community life. Standing here, you can trace an unbroken thread from the Bon Ton's counter to the government offices that occupy the ground today.
As you take in the spot, let the marker's details populate it in your imagination — the feed store and hatchery that Lex Word added when other businesses were failing, the back-room reading room that became the town's first library, the store rebuilt after the 1934 fire and carried on for decades more. This was a place where townspeople bought their groceries, borrowed their first books, and gathered to talk through good times and hard ones.
Kyle sits along the busy corridor between Austin and San Antonio, which makes this an easy and rewarding stop on a Central Texas drive. Pair it with a wander through the surrounding town to get a feel for the kind of Main Street community the Bon Ton once anchored — and reflect on how much a single determined merchant can shape the place he calls home.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Wallace Alexander "Lex" Word
- · Louise "Bobby" Gossett Word
Related events
- · Great Depression
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Kyle Depot
Kyle, TX
When the International and Great Northern Railroad pushed south from Austin toward San Antonio in 1880, the Kyle and Moore families donated 200 acres for a roadbed, depot, and townsite, and a canvas tent quickly gave way to a permanent station. For decades the depot was the beating heart of Kyle — shipping cotton, cattle, and lumber, carrying the mail and Western Union telegrams, and moving nearly everyone who traveled. Its waiting rooms and entrances were segregated in keeping with the Jim Crow laws of the era, and after an 1916 fire the depot was rebuilt on the same site in 1917.
Old D. A. Young Building
Kyle, TX
David Alexander Young came to Texas from Tennessee in 1857 and was among 179 Hays County men who fought in the Civil War, wounded while serving in Woods' 32nd Cavalry. When the International & Great Northern Railway reached Kyle, Young moved from Mountain City and in 1881 raised the town's first permanent store. The surviving building was given to the city of Kyle in 1936 by rancher M. G. Michaelis, Sr.
Beef for the Confederacy
Kyle, TX
During the Civil War, Hays County's established cattle industry became a supply line for the Confederate army, with ranchers designated as "Government Stockraisers" tasked with feeding the Commissary Department. Driving herds across quicksand-bedded, flooded rivers while dodging raiders and enemy patrols, men like the Day brothers, Jesse Driskill, and Mexican War veteran William Washington Moon turned Texas beef into a war effort — some of them serving in uniform besides.
Goforth
Buda, TX
Established in the 1870s by James Taylor Goforth, who ran a general store that served as social hub and informal bank, Goforth became a center of Hays County's cotton economy. At its height between 1880 and 1906 it boasted a drugstore, doctor's office, meat market, stable, and blacksmith, and Goforth later ran one of the area's largest cotton gins. But rail lines bypassed the town, and soil erosion, crop failure, and a 1926 worm infestation emptied it into a ghost town.