The Rev. Thomas Wadlington Cotten
Ballinger, Runnels County, Texas
Marker Inscription
A native of Illinois and elder in the Primitive Baptist Church, the Rev. Thomas W. Cotten moved here from Grayson County in 1877. He helped organize Runnels County's first church, the Colorado Baptist Church, in 1878 and served as first pastor. When Runnels County was organized in 1880, his stone house was the temporary courthouse. He married Mrs. Catharine Shaw (McComb) Hobson (1816-86). Six of their nine children reached adulthood.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
An Illinois native and Primitive Baptist elder, the Rev. Thomas W. Cotten settled in this part of West Texas in 1877 and the next year helped organize Runnels County's first congregation, the Colorado Baptist Church, serving as its first pastor. When the county was formally organized in 1880, his stone house did double duty as the temporary courthouse. He and his wife, Catharine, raised six children to adulthood.
Why it matters
On the raw frontier, a single settler's home and faith could seed both a county's first church and its first seat of government.
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Related people
- · Thomas Wadlington Cotten
- · Catharine Shaw Cotten
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Walthall Cemetery
Ballinger, TX
This quiet burial ground is all that remains of Walthall, the first stable settlement in Runnels County. The community grew up around a stagecoach stop on the Camp Colorado–Fort Concho road in the 1870s, on land the John W. Guest family had claimed the decade before. Its oldest marked grave is that of infant Penny Cotten, who died in 1878; a stone hauled from the Colorado River marks the grave of Mrs. Guest, who died the same year.
Site of Pickettville
Ballinger, TX
Founded in 1862, Pickettville was the first civilian settlement in Runnels County, named for the picket houses and corrals its frontier families built. Ranching households — the Guests, the Wylie brothers and their hands, the Gordons, and the Coffeys — banded together for protection amid the Indian raids that intensified during the Civil War. In 1866 they drove their cattle off to open range, and their old picket corrals later held the herds of trail drivers passing through.
Runnels County Courthouse
Ballinger, TX
After Runnels County organized in 1880, its residents fought a heated contest with Runnels City before Ballinger—on land the Santa Fe Railroad had platted in 1886—won the county seat, and the courthouse rose here in 1888-89. It stands on one of the largest courthouse squares in Texas, a full two city blocks. A 1941 remodeling added two wings faced with stone from the same local quarry reopened along the Colorado River.
Charles H. Noyes
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When 21-year-old Charles H. Noyes was killed in 1919 by a fall from his horse while working cattle on his family's ranch, his grieving parents commissioned a monument not only to their son but to all Texas cowboys. Sculptor Pompeo Coppini studied horses for two years before creating the bronze, producing a work that memorializes the vanishing world of the open-range cowhand.