The Courthouses of Hays County
San Marcos, Hays County, Texas
Marker Inscription
When Hays County originated in 1848, its one public building was a log church-schoolhouse that had to serve as the courthouse, along with its other uses. Although the San Marcos townsite, platted in 1851, contained a court square donated to the county, the forfeiture of a $2,000.00 criminal bond later gave the county funds for building, and in 1861 officials employed contractor C. F. Millett to erect on the Square a 36 x 40-foot, 2-story frame courthouse with a hearing room, jury rooms, and 4 offices. That pine building burned in 1868, and county officials operated from rented quarters until a courthouse of soft, locally quarried limestone was completed in 1871. Damaged by earth shiftings, that 2-story, 45 x 53-foot building was razed (1881) and replaced by a 50 x 60-foot, 2-story building of harder limestone designed by F. e. Ruffini, architect for University of Texas buildings and for courthouses in several other counties. After that 1882-83 structure lost its top story in a fire on Feb. 28, 1908, it also was razed. The fourth and present courthouse, in eclectic style, was designed by C. H. Page & Brother, of Austin. Completed and accepted by the county court on Dec. 13, 1909, it has had interior alterations; it was restored in 1972.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
When Hays County was organized in 1848, justice was dispensed from a log church-schoolhouse that doubled as a courthouse. Over the following six decades the county cycled through a frame building that burned in 1868, two limestone structures undone by shifting ground and fire, and finally the eclectic 1909 courthouse designed by Austin's C. H. Page & Brother that still presides over the San Marcos square. The story tracks the rise of a frontier county into an established seat of Texas government.
Why it matters
A county courthouse was the civic heart of nineteenth-century Texas life, and the succession of buildings on this square mirrors the state's maturation from raw frontier settlement to permanent local government.
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Related people
- · F. E. Ruffini
- · C. H. Page
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Founding of the First Methodist Church
San Marcos, TX
In 1847, in the log home of John D. Pitts, circuit rider A. B. F. Kerr organized the first church in newly created Hays County. The small congregation worshipped in the cabin for two years before building its own house of worship nearby.
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.
Charles Cock Home
San Marcos, TX
Charles S. Cock built this limestone house in 1867, in the years when San Marcos was still a young frontier town finding its feet after the Civil War. A farmer who later served as mayor in the early 1880s, Cock raised his home from a mix of local materials—limestone, elm, pine, and cedar—the kind of hand-gathered construction typical of the Texas Hill Country.
William W. Moon
San Marcos, TX
William W. Moon, orphaned in infancy in Alabama, came to Texas in 1838 and rode with the Texas Rangers, first seeing the San Marcos Springs during a running Indian fight in 1843. Enchanted by the country, he brought his family to build a cabin here in 1845, making the Moons the first permanent Anglo-American settlers of what became Hays County. His cabin hosted the county's first sermon and first school, and he later served in both the Mexican War and the Civil War while running a hotel, stage stop, blacksmith shop, and freight line.