Wharton County
Wharton, Wharton County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Wharton County, created April 3, 1846, from Matagorda and Jackson counties, Organized same year. Named for William H. Wharton, 1806-1839, Texas minister to the United States 1836-1837, and his brother John A. Wharton 1809-1839. Adjutant at San Jacinto; member of Congress of the Republic of Texas 1837-1839. Wharton the county seat.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Wharton County was created in 1846 from Matagorda and Jackson counties and organized the same year, in the first months of Texas statehood. It honors the brothers William H. and John A. Wharton, both prominent figures of the Texas Revolution and the Republic. William served as Texas minister to the United States, while John was an adjutant at the decisive Battle of San Jacinto and a member of the Republic's Congress.
Why it matters
Named for two brothers who helped win and govern an independent Texas, the county ties its founding directly to the revolution and republic that preceded statehood.
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Related people
- · William H. Wharton
- · John A. Wharton
Related events
- · Battle of San Jacinto
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Site of The Home of Robert McAlpin Williamson
Wharton, TX
Born in Georgia in 1806, Robert McAlpin Williamson edited some of Texas's pioneer newspapers, The Texas Gazette and The Mexican Citizen, before throwing himself into the fight for Texas independence. He went on to serve on the Supreme Court of the Republic of Texas from 1836 to 1839 and later in the state legislature. His home once stood on this Wharton site.
The Judge Robert McAlpin Williamson Home
Wharton, TX
This marker commemorates the home of Judge Robert McAlpin Williamson, the famed Republic of Texas jurist and patriot known as 'Three-Legged Willie' for the wooden leg he wore from a childhood illness. A firebrand of the Texas Revolution who became one of the young republic's first district judges, Williamson left a lasting legal legacy in early Texas. The house was moved to this site in 1976.
Wharton County Courthouse
Wharton, TX
Wharton County was carved in 1846 from Stephen F. Austin's original Mexican land grant, and the Kincheloe family donated a courthouse square on the Colorado River. After early frame and brick courthouses, a contentious fight—Judge Croom for a new building, rancher "Shanghai" Pierce and others against—delayed construction until Houston architect Eugene T. Heiner's Second Empire and Italianate design rose in 1889, its salmon brick fired from local river clay. Mid-20th-century remodelings buried its ornament in Moderne stucco before a sweeping 21st-century restoration brought it back.
City of Wharton
Wharton, TX
Wharton was founded in April 1846 as the seat of its county, on land drawn from the grant of William Kincheloe, one of Stephen F. Austin's "Old Three Hundred" colonists who settled the area in 1822. Surveyors laid out the townsite around Monterey Square, and the rich bottomland farms drew settlers steadily. Railroads and irrigation later spurred its growth into a regional center of farming, education, and services.