The Pilgrim Home
Gonzales, Gonzales County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Center hall, 2 double fireplaces, wide board pine floors. Built 1883 for his bride, Mary Fleda Boothe, by Carey J. Pilgrim, editor "Gonzales Inquirer," son of T. J. Pilgrim, founder first Sunday School in Texas. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1965
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
This center-hall home with its double fireplaces and wide pine floors was built in 1883 by Carey J. Pilgrim for his bride, Mary Fleda Boothe. Carey edited the Gonzales Inquirer, and he was the son of T. J. Pilgrim, remembered for founding the first Sunday School in Texas. Recorded as a Texas Historic Landmark in 1965, the house links two generations of a family notable in Texas journalism and religious education.
Why it matters
The Pilgrim home connects the pioneering of Sunday School education in Texas with the rise of the local press, two forces that shaped community life in the 19th-century state.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Carey J. Pilgrim
- · Mary Fleda Boothe
- · T. J. Pilgrim
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Riverside School
Gonzales, TX
Opened in 1914 as the Water Street Mexican School and later renamed Riverside, this one-story brick schoolhouse was the only facility for Mexican American children in segregated Gonzales. As enrollment grew it absorbed a surplus Army building from Camp Swift and the relocated Stieren School, serving Hispanic students until 1948 and then African American students until 1965.
African American Education in Gonzales
Gonzales, TX
Education for Black residents of Gonzales began in the 1870s in the home of Myrtle Moses Mathis and grew more formal in the 1890s within a two-story community building. About 1914 a brick schoolhouse rose on donated land, and in 1922 it was named George Edwards High School, serving some 300 students and eight teachers by 1940. The school closed in 1964 as districts desegregated under the federal Civil Rights Act.
Site of Cost School
Cost, TX
The rural community of Cost—once known as Oso—patched together its schooling from scattered district schools until, in 1915, trustees hired noted architect Henry T. Phelps to design a proper schoolhouse. The two-story brick building opened in 1916 to 125 students, and over the years its curriculum grew from the basics to music, homemaking, shop, and athletics. After the district was folded into Gonzales in 1949, the school closed in 1959 and its very bricks were carried off to build a house across the road.
Harwood Methodist Church and Masonic Lodge
Harwood, TX
After the Galveston, Harrisburg & San Antonio Railroad founded Harwood in 1875, the community raised this two-story meetinghouse. The ground floor served Methodist worship and doubled as a school, while Masonic Lodge No. 468 met upstairs from 1876 until 1962. It is a classic example of the shared-purpose buildings that new railroad towns put up to house their earliest institutions.