The Taylor Public Schools
Taylor, Williamson County, Texas
Marker Inscription
From 1877 until 1880, several private schools served residents of the Taylor area. In 1880 a public institution, the Stock Company School, was built and maintained by a group of private citizens. A school for black children of the community opened the following year. In 1883 a bond election passed which provided revenue for maintaining public schools in Taylor. Augustus Hill, former head of the Bastrop Academy, became the first superintendent. He presided over a ten-grade system, which consisted of a three-room building for all primary, grammar, and high school classes, as well as the small Negro school. Because of increased enrollment, a three-story building was erected in 1890, and a greater variety of subjects was offered to the students. In later years surrounding school districts were annexed, greatly increasing the size of the Taylor public schools. in 1950 the schools were removed from municipal control with the creation of the Taylor Independent School District. For a century the Taylor schools have been a source of pride for the community, while citizens have been faithful supporters of public education. Graduates of the Taylor schools include numerous business, professional and civic leaders.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Taylor's schooling grew from private academies in the late 1870s to the citizen-built Stock Company School in 1880, and a school for the town's Black children opened the very next year. An 1883 bond election funded a true public system under superintendent Augustus Hill, and after decades of growth and annexations, the Taylor Independent School District took control in 1950.
Why it matters
The marker records both a community's century-long investment in public education and the segregated "Negro school" that reflected the racial divisions written into Southern schooling.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
When Taylor's first classrooms opened in the late 1870s, the town was brand new. It grew up along a railroad line crossing the rich Blackland Prairie of Central Texas, some of the most fertile cotton country in the state. Families were arriving to farm, trade and work for the railroad, and within a few years they wanted their children educated close to home.
Texas was coming out of Reconstruction then, and public schooling across the state was thin, unevenly funded and often left to local initiative. In many towns, parents who wanted a school simply organized and paid for one themselves. That is how Taylor started: first with a handful of private schools, then with a school built and run by a group of citizens.
The period also set the racial terms of Southern schooling for generations. Texas law required separate schools for Black and white children, and communities like Taylor built two parallel systems. They were rarely equal in resources. The small school for Black children that the marker mentions belongs to that larger, painful pattern.
People & events
The story begins with Taylor's private schools, which served the area from 1877 to 1880. In 1880 a group of local citizens took a bigger step: they built and maintained the Stock Company School, open to the public but paid for privately. A year later a school for the community's Black children opened. From very early on, Black families in Taylor were building education into their own part of the town's life.
The turning point came in 1883, when voters approved a bond election that gave Taylor steady revenue for public schools. To lead the new system the town hired Augustus Hill, who had headed the Bastrop Academy, as its first superintendent. He oversaw ten grades. Primary, grammar and high school classes all shared one three-room building, alongside the small school for Black students.
The town kept growing and enrollment outgrew those rooms. In 1890 Taylor put up a three-story school building and widened what students could study. Over the following decades neighboring districts were annexed and the system grew larger still. In 1950 the schools moved out of city hands and came under the new Taylor Independent School District.
Its place in the American story
Taylor's path, from private schools to a citizen-funded school to a tax-supported public system, is the American public school movement at the scale of a single town. In the late 1800s, communities across the country made the same decision Taylor made at its 1883 bond election: educating every child was a public responsibility worth taxing themselves for.
The marker is just as honest about the other half of the story. The separate school for Black children shows how segregation was built into public education in the South from the start. Those dual systems lasted until the civil rights era and the Supreme Court's 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision, and in many places for years afterward. Taylor's schools carry both histories: a real community commitment to learning, and the unequal lines drawn through it.
The move to an independent school district in 1950 also follows a broad Texas trend. Independent districts became the state's standard way to govern and fund local schools.
If you visit
Taylor is an easy trip northeast of Austin. It still feels like a railroad and cotton town, with a historic downtown that rewards a slow walk. As you stand at the marker, try to picture the whole school system of the 1880s: one three-room building, plus a separate small school just for Black children.
Think about the gap between that and a modern school district. Everything in between came from local voters, parents and teachers deciding, again and again, to put money and effort into the town's children. The marker takes quiet pride in the graduates who went on to lead in business, the professions and civic life.
It pairs well with other stops in the Williamson County area. If you're traveling with kids, it's a good place to ask what school might have been like for them in 1883, and why the town kept two separate schools.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Related people
- · Augustus Hill
Themes & tags
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