Robert Hixon Belvin Home
San Marcos, Hays County, Texas
Marker Inscription
A portion of this structure was built about 1859 as one of the first schools in San Marcos. the Rev. Robert H. Belvin, president (1870-75) of Coronal Institute, a Methodist school, converted it into a home for his family in 1875. the Rev. J. W. Vest, 1890-1901 owner, enlarged the house. Bought in 1903 by Prof. J. s. brown, of the first faculty of Southwest Texas State University. The house was restored in 1974 by Larry and Diana Murphree. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1974
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Part of this San Marcos structure began about 1859 as one of the town's first schools before the Rev. Robert H. Belvin, president of the Methodist Coronal Institute, converted it into a family home in 1875. Later owners enlarged it, and it eventually housed a professor from the first faculty of what became Southwest Texas State University, tying the building to the town's long educational heritage.
Why it matters
The house links the earliest schooling in San Marcos to the university that grew there, tracing the deep roots of education in a Central Texas community.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Robert H. Belvin
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Kone-Cliett House
San Marcos, TX
Edward Reeves Kone spent decades in Hays County public life — as attorney, sheriff, judge, and education superintendent — and later served as state agriculture commissioner from 1908 to 1914. In 1881 he bought this bluff overlooking the Balcones Fault and about 1890 built a home in a derivative Queen Anne style. The Kone family sold the house in 1914 to cotton grower and postmaster Oran W. Cliett, who lived here until 1958.
Alexander Gates & Lillian Johnson Thomas House
San Marcos, TX
Alexander Gates Thomas, an English professor and Texas folklore authority, and Lillian Johnson, an art professor, met as teachers at Southwest Texas Normal School and married late in life. Charmed on their honeymoon by the stone cottages of England's Cotswolds, they built this Tudor Revival house themselves from native stone quarried near San Marcos, giving it 14-inch walls, a swept gable roof, and pointed lancet windows. It is a small monument to two educators' shared imagination.
Kone-Yarbrough House
San Marcos, TX
This Victorian home with its distinctive central chimney rose in 1886 for the family of merchant Sam R. Kone, Jr., a San Marcos businessman, Mason, and city councilman. His wife Laura had taught art at the local Coronal Institute, and their daughter Florence, an educator, spent an extraordinary eighty years under its roof. Later stewards, the Yarbroughs, carried the house's preservation into a new generation.
Ragsdale-Jackman-Yarbrough House
San Marcos, TX
Built in 1868 by Peter C. Ragsdale, a veteran of the Republic of Texas army, this San Marcos house later sheltered a girls' school run by his widow Elmira before passing in 1891 to "Uncle Billy" Jackman. Jackman lived a quintessential Texas life — a trail driver to Kansas in the 1870s and '80s, later Hays County sheriff, town postmaster, and president of the Trail Drivers Association. Restored by educators in 1947, the home links the frontier, cattle-drive, and civic eras of Central Texas.