Miss Mae Murfee

🏛️The era

When Mae Murfee started teaching in 1905, the South Plains of Texas were still frontier country. Ranching had only recently given way to farming, the railroad had not yet reached Lubbock, and many children learned in small rural schools that served scattered farm families. Teachers were often young, barely trained, and working with very little.

Over the next few decades, the region changed fast. Railroads arrived, towns grew, and cotton farming spread across the plains. Lubbock grew from a small county seat into the commercial center of the region. Its schools had to grow with it, from one-room classrooms toward graded schools, real high schools, and accredited courses that students could use to go on to college.

It was also a time when women were taking on new public roles. Women's clubs across the country worked for libraries, schools, and civic improvement, and education was one of the few professions widely open to women. Ambitious teachers like Murfee used that opening to reshape whole school systems.

👥People & events

Mae Murfee was born in Haskell County in 1888, the daughter of J. E. and Sarah Murfee. She was still a teenager when she began teaching in the Slide community in Lubbock County, and she became principal there. In 1909 she went to college at the school now called Texas Woman's University, earned her degree, and later went on to graduate work.

Back in Lubbock, she broke new ground. In 1914 she became the first woman principal of Lubbock Junior High. Two years later, she started the city's first high school library, using her own books. She led the high school's history and government department for many years and won state credit for its courses, so that a Lubbock diploma carried real weight.

She was always looking for better ways to teach. She brought visual aids into her classroom, buying the equipment herself. She worked in the campaign to bring Texas Tech to Lubbock, and the college opened in 1925. From 1928 to 1936 she served as county superintendent of education and brought every school in the county up to a common standard.

Underneath it all was a simple belief she put into words: almost any boy or girl could grow into a useful citizen if the right parent or teacher was there at the right moment. She lived that belief until her death in 1965. She was also active in the Texas Federation of Women's Clubs and in historical groups, and the school at this site carries her name.

🇺🇸Its place in the American story

Across the country in the early 1900s, public education was being built almost from scratch, especially in rural regions. The people who did that work were usually not famous. Very often they were women teachers and principals who started libraries, pushed for accreditation, and raised standards one school at a time. Mae Murfee's career is a clear example of that national story playing out on the South Plains.

Her part in bringing Texas Tech to Lubbock connects her to a larger change: the growth of public higher education in the American West. A college in Lubbock meant that young people on the plains could go to university without moving far from home. It also turned the city into a regional center of learning.

Her story also shows the reach of the women's club movement. Groups like the Texas Federation of Women's Clubs gave women a way to shape public life, through libraries, schools, and civic causes, long before women held most elected offices.

🧭If you visit

This marker stands at a school named in Mae Murfee's memory, which is fitting for a woman who spent her life in classrooms. If school is in session, please be respectful: watch the grounds from the sidewalk and keep a low profile during drop-off and pickup times.

As you stand here, picture Lubbock as she first knew it: a small plains town with no railroad and very few books. The city around you, with its schools, neighborhoods, and the Texas Tech campus, grew up within her lifetime, and she helped build parts of it.

If you are touring Lubbock, pair this stop with a visit to the Texas Tech campus, the college she worked to bring here. It is a good way to see how one teacher's ambitions for her students grew into something the whole region now relies on.