Old Bastrop Academy Bell
Bastrop, Bastrop County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Cast 1850. Bastrop ladies collected money, and bell was brought here in 1851 by steamer "Water Mockasin." In 1892, no longer used to summon school classes, it was placed in a cupola at the Methodist Church; since 1928, in this campanile. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark, 1966
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Cast in 1850, this bell was bought with money gathered by the ladies of Bastrop and carried upriver in 1851 aboard the steamer "Water Mockasin." For decades it summoned children to their lessons at the town's academy. Retired from school duty, it later hung in a church cupola and, since 1928, in this campanile.
Why it matters
A schoolhouse bell speaks to the early value frontier Texans placed on education — and to the steamboat commerce that once connected inland towns to the wider world.
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Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Hartford Jenkins Home
Bastrop, TX
Built in 1906 by J.P. Fowler, Jr., this Bastrop residence was purchased in 1912 by Hartford and Beulah Alice Jenkins, whose descendants still own it. Hartford Jenkins was a prominent public servant, serving as the county's first superintendent of schools as well as a county judge, commissioner, and district court clerk. The home earned recognition as a Recorded Texas Historic Landmark in 1971.
Site of Bastrop Military Institute
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Chartered in 1852 as Bastrop Academy, this Methodist school was rechartered under the Methodist Episcopal Church South in 1853 and reorganized in 1856 as the Bastrop Military Institute. Military-style academies like it were popular across the antebellum South, blending classical study with drill. Its founding reflects the growth of organized education in early statehood Texas.
H. P. Luckett House
Bastrop, TX
From 1851 to 1892 this lot held the Bastrop Academy; the city then sold it to Dr. Humphrey Powell Luckett and his wife Frances, who by 1893 had this ornate Queen Anne home under construction to a La Grange architect's design. Dr. Luckett, an authority on yellow fever, was named city health officer in 1897. The fourteen-room house—with double wraparound galleries, fishscale shingles, and carved woodwork—was recorded as a Texas Historic Landmark in 2011.
Allen-Fowler House
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Built around 1852 for the headmaster of the new Bastrop Academy, this house doubled as a boarding home for students in an era when frontier towns prized any school they could get. When the academy became the Bastrop Military Institute in 1857 under Col. R.T.P. Allen, the home hosted cadets and even welcomed Sam Houston, whose sons studied there. A later owner dressed the two-story L-plan house in the jigsawn woodwork and bay window fashionable in the Victorian age.