Paris
Paris, Lamar County, Texas
Marker Inscription
This site marks the first call for survey of the city of Paris, Republic of Texas, 1844. Geo. W. Wright, early settler, soldier in Texas War for Independence, congressman of the Republic, donated 50 acres of land for Lamar County Seat. Plat of lots, blocks and streets was drawn, and from that beginning grew the present city.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
In 1844, while Texas was still an independent republic, early settler George W. Wright — a veteran of the Texas War for Independence and a congressman of the Republic — donated fifty acres for a new county seat. Surveyors laid out the blocks and streets, and from that plat grew the city of Paris.
Why it matters
Paris's founding captures the frontier moment when Republic-era Texans turned donated prairie into the planned towns that would organize a new state.
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Related people
- · George W. Wright
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Old Cemetery of Paris
Paris, TX
On land once owned by George Washington Wright, founder of Paris, this was the town's primary burial ground from 1845 to 1865, its oldest grave said to be that of a free Black man who worked for Wright. When the newer Evergreen Cemetery opened in 1866, many graves were moved, yet Wright himself was buried here in 1877, and a granite marker honors soldiers of the 9th Texas Infantry, C.S.A., who died in a measles epidemic in 1862. Of roughly 325 graves, about a hundred stones survive, most from 1870 to 1910.
First Presbyterian Church
Paris, TX
Organized in 1861 by the Rev. John Anderson, Paris's First Presbyterian congregation worshiped first in an Odd Fellows seminary and a downtown shop before building its first sanctuary in 1874. The present church, designed by architects L. B. Volk and Son and built in 1891, is a Romanesque building of Carthage stone with stained-glass windows imported from Belgium. Inside, a cruciform auditorium rises beneath a wooden ribbed vault of beaded boards.
First United Methodist Church of Paris
Paris, TX
This Paris, Texas, congregation traces its roots to 1843, when the Rev. James Graham organized an early Methodist church in the area that became Centenary Methodist Episcopal Church, South. After the devastating Paris fire of 1916, it merged with Lamar Avenue Methodist Church to form a single downtown congregation in 1918 under the Rev. Robert P. Shuler.
Central National Road of the Republic of Texas
Paris, TX
Created by the Republic of Texas in 1844, the Central National Road was conceived as a military highway to link with a U.S. Army road north of the Red River and to knit the young republic together. Major George W. Stell surveyed its 130-mile route from the mouth of Elm Fork on the Trinity to the Kiomatia Crossing, running through the newly founded town of Paris and past John Neely Bryan's cabin, the seed of Dallas. Builders earned 160-acre land grants for each mile cleared to a road 30 feet wide.