The Jeremiah Hamilton House
Austin, Travis County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Born about 1839 in Tennessee, Jeremiah Hamilton was one of nine Black representatives in the 12th Texas Legislature, 1869-71. He bought this lot on Waller Creek in 1871 and began building this oddly shaped stone structure to house his grocery store. Italian-born Michael Paggi owned the property from 1873 to 1881. He was involved in several unusual business ventures, including the manufacture of ice. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1978
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Born into slavery in Tennessee around 1839, Jeremiah Hamilton rose to become one of nine Black members of the 12th Texas Legislature during Reconstruction, from 1869 to 1871. In 1871 he bought this lot on Waller Creek and began an oddly shaped stone building to house his grocery. A decade later it passed to the Italian-born entrepreneur Michael Paggi, whose ventures included the novel manufacture of ice.
Why it matters
Hamilton was among the first generation of African American lawmakers in the South, whose brief Reconstruction-era political power marked a democratic experiment soon rolled back.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
The Jeremiah Hamilton House belongs to the volatile years after the Civil War, when the defeated South was being remade under Reconstruction. Slavery had ended, and for a brief, extraordinary moment Black Southern men could vote, hold office, and help write the laws that governed them.
Texas entered this era as a former Confederate state under federal oversight, its politics upended. In 1869 voters elected the Twelfth Texas Legislature, and for the first time Black Texans sat among the lawmakers. Austin, the capital, was a modest but rising town, its commercial life gathering along creeks like Waller Creek near the center of things.
It was a window of genuine possibility — and a narrow one. Within a few years the political opening Reconstruction had pried open would be forced shut across the South, making the achievements of these years all the more remarkable for having happened at all.
People & events
Jeremiah Hamilton was born about 1839 in Tennessee, and in the Twelfth Texas Legislature of 1869–71 he was one of nine Black representatives — men who, within living memory of bondage, now helped make the laws of the state.
In 1871 Hamilton bought a lot on Waller Creek and set about building an oddly shaped stone structure to house his grocery store. The building itself is the point: a Black legislator, in the heart of the former Confederacy, putting down roots as a property owner and merchant, betting on a future in the city.
The property's later life reflects the mingling that made a growing town. From 1873 to 1881 it belonged to Italian-born Michael Paggi, an immigrant entrepreneur with a taste for unusual ventures — among them, the manufacture of ice, a genuine marvel in a hot Texas summer before mechanical refrigeration was common. In one small stone building, a formerly enslaved lawmaker and an immigrant inventor each left their mark.
Its place in the American story
Hamilton stands among the first generation of African American officeholders in American history — the several hundred Black men who won seats in Southern legislatures and in Congress during Reconstruction. Their tenure was the country's first real experiment in interracial democracy, and its brevity is part of the story.
That experiment was rolled back. By the century's end, disenfranchisement and segregation had stripped away most of what these men had gained, and their very existence was, for generations, written out of the popular memory of Reconstruction. A surviving building tied to one of them is therefore rare and valuable evidence — proof, in stone, that this chapter really happened.
The layered ownership adds a second American theme: immigration. Paggi's arrival and his novel ice business speak to the striving, inventive newcomers who were also remaking the postwar country. Together the two men turn a single lot on Waller Creek into a small parable of American possibility in the Gilded Age.
If you visit
You'll find the site in central Austin, near Waller Creek, and its most telling feature is exactly what the record emphasizes: the odd shape of the stone structure. Look at how it's built and fitted to its lot — this is a working commercial building from the 1870s, not a grand monument, and that ordinariness is what makes it powerful.
Stand there and hold the two lives in mind at once: a man born into slavery who rose to help govern Texas, and an immigrant who tried to make ice in the Texas heat. The stone doesn't announce any of that on its own; you bring the story to it.
If you're exploring Austin's history on foot, let this be the stop that complicates the easy version. It marks a moment of real, hard-won Black political power — and a reminder of how quickly such moments can be lost. That makes it one of the more quietly moving places you can pause at in the city.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Jeremiah Hamilton
- · Michael Paggi
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Victory Grill
Austin, TX
During World War II, segregation barred Black servicemen from most Austin restaurants and recreation, prompting local leaders to seek dedicated sites for soldiers on leave. Johnny Holmes answered that need, opening the original Victory Grill in a converted icehouse on East 11th Street to mark VJ Day in August 1945. Its Kovac Room became a celebrated stop on the "Chitlin' Circuit" of Black music venues, hosting blues and jazz until desegregation and changing tastes led to its 1973 closing; Holmes's children later reopened the landmark.
Colored Teachers State Association of Texas Building
Austin, TX
This 1952 building was designed by John S. Chase, the first licensed African American architect in Texas, and originally housed the Colored Teachers State Association of Texas. Founded in 1884, the association won a series of civil rights gains for Black students and teachers in a segregated state. Its flat-roofed, industrial-influenced modern design served the organization until it dissolved in 1966.
Jacob Fontaine
Austin, TX
Born into slavery around 1808, Jacob Fontaine came to Austin about 1850 as the enslaved property of an Episcopal minister. In 1864 he began preaching to fellow enslaved people and, after emancipation, founded the First Baptist Church, Colored, and roughly five other congregations along with a county association of Black Baptists. He published the "Gold Dollar," one of Austin's earliest Black newspapers, and campaigned to bring the University of Texas to the city.
Wooldridge Square
Austin, TX
When Edwin Waller laid out Austin as the Republic of Texas capital in 1839, he set aside four public squares; three of the city's first churches, including two early African American congregations, rose around this one. For decades it sat unimproved until Mayor A.P. Wooldridge championed a cleanup and a bandstand in 1909. From that stage came voices ranging from Booker T. Washington and suffragist Minnie Fisher Cunningham to a young Lyndon Johnson launching his first Senate run, while 1960s civil rights marches and counterculture gatherings—including the debut of Austin's armadillo icon—kept the square at the center of civic life.