Waller County
Hempstead, Waller County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Created from Austin and Grimes counties, April 28, and organized Aug. 16, 1873. Named for Edwin Waller (1800-1861), a signer of the Texas Declaration of Independence, 1836; Postmaster General, Texas Republic; First mayor of Austin. Site of rich 1831-1874 Groce plantations, later home of sculptress Elisabet Ney. Hempstead, founded 1857 during building of Houston & Texas Railroad, an important transportation center, is the county seat. Since 1876, county has been site of Prairie View Agricultural and Mechanical College. Economy is based on industry, diversified agriculture and oil production.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Carved from Austin and Grimes counties in 1873, Waller County was named for Edwin Waller, a signer of the Texas Declaration of Independence and first mayor of Austin. Its soil holds a dense history: the rich Groce plantations of 1831–1874, the later home of celebrated sculptor Elisabet Ney, and the railroad town of Hempstead that became the county seat. Since 1876 it has been home to Prairie View A&M, one of Texas's foundational institutions for Black higher education.
Why it matters
The county binds together plantation slavery, the founding of a historically Black land-grant college, and the reach of the railroad — a compact map of the forces that made Reconstruction-era Texas.
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Related people
- · Edwin Waller
- · Elisabet Ney
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Liendo
Hempstead, TX
Leonard W. Groce built Liendo in 1853 as a cotton plantation home famed for its lavish antebellum hospitality — a way of life sustained by enslaved labor. In 1873 it passed to the philosopher Dr. Edmund Duncan Montgomery and his wife, the pioneering Texas sculptor Elisabet Ney, who made it their lifelong homestead and are buried on the grounds.
Prairie View A&M University
Prairie View, TX
Authorized by the Texas legislature in 1876 as the "Agricultural and Mechanical College for Colored Youth," this land-grant school opened in 1878 on a 1,434-acre former slave plantation, making it Texas's second state college. After an early closure it reorganized as a normal institute to train Black teachers, then grew steadily into a full college by the 1930s. Integrated in the 1960s, it took its present name, Prairie View A&M University, in 1973.
Wyatt Chapel Community Cemetery
Prairie View, TX
This burial ground began on Jared E. Kirby's Alta Vista Plantation, where, by oral tradition, the Kirby family set aside land for the graves of enslaved people from Alta Vista and from cousin Leonard Waller Croce's nearby Liendo Plantation. Its many unmarked graves are believed to date to the antebellum years, when the enslaved rarely had means for lasting headstones. After emancipation the community kept using the site — Kirby's widow deeded the plantation in 1876 for what became Prairie View A&M University — and it took the name of the nearby Wyatt Chapel, holding the graves of former slaves, their descendants, and veterans of both World Wars.
Chappell Hill Female College Bell
Chappell Hill, TX
The Chappell Hill Male and Female Institute, founded in 1850, was a pioneer of higher learning in early Texas and came under Methodist control after 1854. Its women's branch was chartered separately in 1856, and the campus was rebuilt after an 1871 fire. This bell, cast in 1873, is the sole surviving relic of the college, which closed its doors in 1912.