Site of the Town of Margaret
Margaret, Foard County, Texas
Marker Inscription
First known as Pease. Renamed in honor of Margaret Wesley, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. John Wesley. First Anglo-American child born in Hardeman County. First County Seat of Hardeman County, 1884-1890. Erected by the State of Texas 1936
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
First called Pease, this settlement was renamed for Margaret Wesley, remembered as the first Anglo-American child born in Hardeman County. From 1884 to 1890 Margaret served as the county's first seat of government before the honor — and much of the town's reason for being — moved elsewhere. The State of Texas marked the site in 1936, during the state's centennial wave of historical markers.
Why it matters
The vanished town traces the familiar arc of the frontier county seat, where the loss of a courthouse could unmake a community and leave only a marker behind.
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Related people
- · Margaret Wesley
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Pease River Battlefield
Margaret, TX
On this ground in December 1860, Texas Rangers under Captain L. S. Ross overtook a Comanche encampment and recaptured Cynthia Ann Parker, who had been taken as a child during a raid in 1836 and raised among the Comanche for twenty-four years. Torn from the family she had made—including her son, the future chief Quanah Parker—her recapture became one of the most famous and tragic episodes of the Texas frontier. The state marked the battlefield in 1936.
Site of Old Pease City
Crowell, TX
Founded in 1880 by early settlers Benjamin E. Lower and the Wesley family, Pease City grew around a stone post office and trading post that served some 3,500 square miles of thinly settled North Texas country, with mail carried by stage or horseback. Named for the Pease River and Governor E. M. Pease, the town faded when its post office closed in 1885 and the county seat shifted to Margaret. The site later became part of Foard County.
Old Mounds Cemetery
Medicine Mound, TX
This cemetery is the last trace of the original settlement of Medicine Mound, named for nearby mounds whose springs and minerals were thought to have healing properties. Established by the late 1800s beside a building that served as both schoolhouse and church, it holds only about nine known burials—including two infant Kerley children under its one surviving 1891 stone—and residents of Mexican descent. When the railroad passed to the north, the community moved and the old site was abandoned.
Foard County
Crowell, TX
Foard County was assembled in 1891 from pieces of four neighboring counties as settlement thickened across northwest Texas. It honors Robert L. Foard (1831–1898), a Confederate officer and prominent Columbus lawyer. The county seat of Crowell grew after a railroad reached it in 1908, tying this ranching country into the wider Texas economy.