Site of Idlewild Community
Macdona, Bexar County, Texas
Marker Inscription
This farming community was a growing settlement in July of 1867 when a group of Indians on horseback attacked Romanus Gross, age 51, and his 19-year-old son George on land belonging to the elder Gross' son-in-law, Michael Kauffmann. A party of men from Castroville was in pursuit of the Indians, who had been accused of stealing horses. Both Grosses were shot in the side; George was scalped. The community was formally organized in about 1879, the same year that Thomas Dunkin, a lawyer, arrived from New York. Dunkin lived and worked as a tutor in the home of Michael Kauffmann and his family. Seeing the growth of the community, Dunkin and Kauffmann convinced their neighbors of the need for a schoolhouse. Kauffmann provided the land and Dunkin became their first teacher. He taught an innovative curriculum designed in New York for one-room schools. Dunkin welcomed the railroad in 1881 by offering twenty acres of his own land for a station and townsite, but other necessary land could not be secured and the station was erected on a site that became Lacoste. Competition between the communities was high, and Idlewild remained an agricultural and livestock center. In 1887, Dunkin applied for a U. S. postal permit. He first chose the name Ida, for Michael Kauffmann's daughter, and then tried Ivanhoe, but both names were rejected by the postal service because they were already in use in other Texas locations. He finally named the community Idlewild after Idlewild, New York. The post office remained in service until 1902. Idlewild's second school closed in 1955. (1999)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Idlewild grew from a scattered farming settlement — where a violent 1867 raid left two members of the Gross family shot and one scalped — into an organized community by 1879. A New York lawyer named Thomas Dunkin tutored, taught the district's first school, and named the town after Idlewild, New York, after the postal service rejected his earlier choices. When the railroad bypassed it for nearby Lacoste, Idlewild's fortunes faded; its post office closed in 1902 and its last school in 1955.
Why it matters
Idlewild's rise and quiet disappearance trace the boom-and-bust logic of the Texas frontier, where a railroad's route could decide which towns lived and which vanished.
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Related people
- · Thomas Dunkin
- · Michael Kauffmann
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
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