Site of Coronal Institute
San Marcos, Hays County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Established 1868 by educator O. N. Hollingsworth. A private school, it was coeducational and offered military training to boys. So-named because it was a Coronal (crown) atop this hill. In 1870 the Rev. R. H. Belvin bought school, but sold it to the Methodist Church in 1876. First structure, of limestone, burned in 1890. A handsome, 3-story building soon replaced it. Hundreds of students attended institute, which helped pioneer education in southwest Texas. The Methodist Church closed school, 1918. It was sold, 1925, to San Marcos School District.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Founded in 1868 by educator O. N. Hollingsworth, the Coronal Institute crowned a San Marcos hilltop—hence its name—as a private, coeducational school that also drilled its boys in military training. It changed hands from Rev. R. H. Belvin to the Methodist Church, weathered an 1890 fire that destroyed its limestone hall, and rose again as a handsome three-story building. Hundreds of students passed through before the Methodists closed it in 1918 and the San Marcos district bought the site in 1925.
Why it matters
In the raw decades after the Civil War, private academies like Coronal did the hard work of planting formal education across southwest Texas before public schools could reach every hilltop.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · O. N. Hollingsworth
- · R. H. Belvin
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
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.
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.
Robert Hixon Belvin Home
San Marcos, TX
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.
First United Methodist Church
San Marcos, TX
Hays County's first church was organized on August 5, 1847, when circuit rider A. B. F. Kerr gathered nine charter members in the home of John D. Pitts. By 1849 the growing congregation met in a log house that served at once as church, courthouse, and school, braving wild animals and the dangers of the frontier to worship. A first building rose on this site in 1855, and the present Gothic Revival sanctuary was completed in 1893.