Miriam A. Ferguson Birthplace
Sparks, Bell County, Texas
Marker Inscription
A five-room log cabin on this land was the home of Miriam A. Wallace (1875-1961) from her birth until her marriage to James E. Ferguson in 1899. After her husband had been twice elected governor, Mrs. Ferguson became the first woman elected governor of any state. She served two terms, from 1925 to 1927 and from 1933 to 1935. The property was inherited by Mrs. Ferguson and about 1917 was mortgaged to support her husband's political career. The home was destroyed by fire in 1926. (1967)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
In a five-room log cabin on this Bell County land, Miriam Amanda Wallace was born in 1875 and lived until she married James E. Ferguson in 1899. After her husband twice won the Texas governorship, "Ma" Ferguson stepped forward herself and in 1924 became the first woman elected governor of any state, serving terms in the 1920s and 1930s. The old homeplace, mortgaged to fund the family's political fortunes, burned in 1926.
Why it matters
As one of the first women elected governor in the nation, Miriam Ferguson marked a milestone in American women's political leadership just after suffrage.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
Miriam Amanda Wallace was born in 1875 into a Texas still recovering from the Civil War and Reconstruction. Bell County in Central Texas was farming country, and a five-room log cabin like the one on this land was a solid, respectable home for a rural family of the time. She lived here from birth until her marriage in 1899.
Her adult life spanned a remarkable stretch of American political history. She was a grown woman before women could vote in national elections. The Nineteenth Amendment was ratified in 1920, and within a few years women were not only voting but running for high office. Texas politics in the 1910s and 1920s was fierce, shaped by fights over Prohibition, the influence of the revived Ku Klux Klan, and deep suspicion of political machines.
Her two terms came at very different moments. The first, 1925 to 1927, fell in the boom years of the 1920s. The second, 1933 to 1935, came in the depths of the Great Depression, when Texas, like the whole country, was struggling with collapsed farm prices and widespread hardship.
People & events
In 1899 Miriam Wallace married James E. Ferguson, a lawyer and banker with big political ambitions. He was elected governor of Texas twice, in 1914 and 1916. The marker records a telling detail: around 1917 the family mortgaged this property, which Miriam had inherited, to support his political career. Her childhood home became collateral for his campaigns.
James Ferguson's second term ended in scandal. In 1917 he was impeached and removed from office, and he was barred from holding state office again. That is where Miriam's own political story begins. Unable to run himself, James backed his wife, and in 1924 she ran for governor. Supporters called her "Ma" Ferguson. Her campaign openly promised voters two governors for the price of one, and she was widely understood to govern alongside her husband.
She won, and the marker calls her the first woman elected governor of any state. The full record has a nuance worth knowing. On the same election day in 1924, Nellie Tayloe Ross won the governorship of Wyoming, and Ross was sworn in a couple of weeks before Ferguson. The two women share the milestone, and which of them counts as "first" depends on whether you count election or inauguration. Ferguson went on to serve two terms. In 1926, while she was in her first term, the cabin where she grew up burned down.
Its place in the American story
Miriam Ferguson's election came only four years after the Nineteenth Amendment. Along with Nellie Tayloe Ross, she showed that the highest office in a state was now open to a woman. That was a genuine break with the past, and it made national headlines.
Her career also complicates the story in useful ways. Historians have long debated how much power she held in her own right and how much her husband held behind the scenes, and her campaigns openly made him part of the deal. Her path to office shows that early women's political breakthroughs often came through family networks and circumstances as much as through the organized suffrage movement. Her time in office, like her husband's, was also marked by controversy.
Whatever you conclude about her, the story that starts at this cabin runs through some of the biggest themes of 20th-century America: women's political rights, the rough-and-tumble of state politics, and a rural Texas girl who ended up at the center of it all.
If you visit
There is no cabin left to tour. The house burned in 1926, so this is a place for imagination. Picture a five-room log home on this Bell County land, and a girl growing up here in the 1870s and 1880s with no idea she would one day govern the second-largest state in the nation.
Take in the rural setting. The quiet farmland around Sparks is a strong contrast to the noisy campaigns and statehouse battles that came later. It is worth remembering that this land was mortgaged to fund those campaigns, a very personal stake in a very public career.
This stop fits well into a Central Texas road trip. You can pair it with a visit to the State Capitol in Austin, where both Fergusons served. Seeing both places gives you the two ends of her story: the modest birthplace and the halls of power.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Related people
- · Miriam A. Ferguson
- · James E. Ferguson
Themes & tags
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