Mills County Jail
Goldthwaite, Mills County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Mills County Jail, 1888. First structure built by newly organized county, before county seat was chosen.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Built in 1888, the Mills County Jail was the very first structure erected by the newly organized county—raised even before a county seat had been chosen. In frontier Texas, a secure jail was often the first order of business for a young county government asserting law and order across a sparsely settled land.
Why it matters
That a fledgling county's first public building was its jail speaks to how central the machinery of law and order was to organizing the Texas frontier.
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Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Mills County
Goldthwaite, TX
Mills County was carved from four neighboring counties—Brown, Comanche, Hamilton, and Lampasas—and created on March 15, 1887, organizing that August with Goldthwaite as its seat. It was named for John T. Mills, a judge of the Third and Seventh Judicial Districts back in the days of the Republic of Texas. The marker records the county's founding facts.
Mills County Courthouse
Goldthwaite, TX
After Mills County was organized in 1887 and Goldthwaite named county seat, an Oscar Ruffini-designed courthouse served from 1890 until fire destroyed it in 1912. The county then hired San Antonio architect Henry T. Phelps, whose 1913 three-story Classical Revival building — with its central pediment and fluted engaged columns — still anchors the town square.
The Old Town Well, Goldthwaite
Goldthwaite, TX
In August 1887, tragedy struck as the town well of Goldthwaite was being dug: Mr. Peyton was overcome and killed by poisonous fumes, and Ben Cox nearly died beside him. Deed H. Mayer descended into the shaft to pull Cox to safety and recover Peyton's body. The Mills County Historical Society raised this marker in memory of the three men.
First Methodist Church of Goldthwaite
Goldthwaite, TX
Methodism reached this part of Central Texas in the mid-1850s by way of circuit-riding preachers—among them H. Childress, the "bear-hunting preacher" who traveled armed for protection. When the Santa Fe Railway founded the town of Goldthwaite in 1885, arriving residents formed a congregation of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, and completed a wood-frame sanctuary within two years. Through denominational mergers the church became First Methodist in 1939 and First United Methodist in 1968.