Middleton Tate Johnson
Arlington, Tarrant County, Texas
Marker Inscription
The Father of Tarrant County. A member of the Congress of the Republic. Born in South Carolina, 1810. Died at Austin, Texas, May 15, 1866. Johnson County was named in his honor.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Born in South Carolina in 1810, Middleton Tate Johnson became such a foundational figure in North Texas settlement that he is remembered as 'the Father of Tarrant County.' He served in the Congress of the Republic of Texas and left a wide mark on the region's early development. He died at Austin in 1866, and neighboring Johnson County was named in his honor.
Why it matters
Johnson stands among the founding settlers and legislators who organized the Republic-era Texas frontier into the counties that still bear their names.
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Related people
- · Middleton Tate Johnson
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Marrow Bone Spring
Arlington, TX
Long an Indian habitation, Marrow Bone Spring became a crossroads of the young Republic of Texas: Sam Houston's peace envoys visited in 1843, a licensed trading post opened nearby in 1845, and settlers of the Peters Colony put down roots. Soldier-statesman Middleton Tate Johnson posted troops here in the late 1840s, and in 1851 Tarrant County's first post office opened at Johnson's Station, which flourished for years around the reliable water.
Johnson Station Cemetery
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Johnson Station began in the 1840s as a ranger station and trading post on the North Texas frontier, and its cemetery remains the clearest reminder of that vanished settlement. The oldest marked grave dates to 1863, though older, unmarked burials likely lie among them; here rest pioneer families, Civil War veterans, and charter members of an early Masonic lodge, in a district long since absorbed into Arlington.
Arlington Cemetery
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Spanning more than ten acres, Arlington Cemetery gathers within its bounds several older graveyards — the original town cemetery, the W.W. McNatt addition, the Masonic Cemetery, and the Old City Cemetery. McNatt, an Arkansas transplant of 1872 and prominent merchant-farmer, sold the ground to the Arlington Cemetery Society in 1899. The oldest documented grave is that of one-year-old Mattie Luna Cooper (1874–75); around her rest pioneer settlers, veterans from the Civil War to World War II, and a long roster of the town's postmasters and mayors.
First Baptist Church of Arlington
Arlington, TX
This congregation first organized in the 1870s at Johnson Station, an early Tarrant County settlement and stagecoach stop. When the Texas and Pacific Railroad drove a line through the area in 1876 and founded the town of Arlington, the church—like the community's other institutions—picked up and moved to the new rail town. After decades in temporary quarters and successive sanctuaries, including one lost to fire in 1944, the congregation settled at its present site.