McLennan County
Waco, McLennan County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Created January 22, 1850. Organized August 5, 1850. Named in honor of Neil McLennan 1787-1867. Came to Texas in 1835. Located on the Bosque River in 1840. Built the first dwelling a log cabin, in McLennan County Waco, the county seat.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
McLennan County was created and organized in 1850, named for Neil McLennan (1787–1867), a Scottish-born pioneer who came to Texas in 1835 and settled on the Bosque River in 1840. He built the area's first dwelling, a log cabin, near what became Waco, the county seat. His name endures on one of Central Texas's most important counties.
Why it matters
It honors the earliest settlers who staked out Central Texas on the eve of statehood, planting the roots of the city of Waco.
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Related people
- · Neil McLennan
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Sarah Ann Vouchere Walker
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Sarah Ann Vouchere Walker was the widow of Jacob Walker, remembered as among the last defenders to fall at the Alamo. Louisiana-born, she came to Texas in 1829 and eventually received the earliest land grant recorded in Sabine County, a substantial tract east of the Brazos. Frontier legend credits her with a 300-mile horseback ride to warn Sam Houston of a coming Indian attack, and her descendants set aside her burial ground in perpetuity, marking it in 1965.
Moore Cemetery
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Missouri native Louis Moore came to Texas about 1834 and received title in 1835 to land on the east bank of the Brazos above the old Waco village. When his son John died in 1858 and his wife and infant daughter soon after, Moore buried them atop the highest hill on his estate, beginning what grew from a family plot into a community burial ground. Formalized by an association in 1921 and now spanning more than eleven acres, the cemetery holds veterans from the Texas Revolution to the present.
Louis Moore
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Missouri-born Louis Moore came to Texas about 1834, received a Mexican land grant, and enlisted in the Texas Army in April 1836, guarding the baggage at Harrisburg during the decisive Battle of San Jacinto. He later served with the Texas Ranger company that established Fort Fisher, raised nine children, and spent his last years in the Chalk Bluff community.
Chalk Bluff Baptist Church
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Founded in 1870 as White Rock Baptist Church by settlers who wanted a Baptist congregation nearby, this church was received into the Waco Baptist Association in 1871 and worshipped at the Union Grove School until it built its own home in 1878. A move to dissolve in 1907 was rescinded the next year, and the congregation carried its old building's materials to a new home at Chalk Bluff. That structure burned in 1934 and was rebuilt, and the church still serves the Waco area today.