Williams-Atkinson Homestead
Maysfield, Milam County, Texas
Marker Inscription
This house, built in 1893, was the vision of Thomas Herbert Williams, a South Carolina native and descendant of Rhode Island founder Roger Williams, and his wife Emma (Massengale). An officer in the Palmetto Sharpshooters of the Confederate Army, he left his home state shortly after the Civil War and arrived in Milam County in 1866. Williams became a prosperous landowner in Texas, accumulating approximately 5,000 acres over time. He was a major cotton producer in the central Texas region and built his own cotton gin. Thomas and Emma made plans to build a residence at this site, but he passed away before its completion. She finished the homestead in 1893 and successfully ran the farm and household. Eldest daughter Amelia Worthington Williams subsequently raised her four sisters following Emma's death in 1897; all five received college degrees. Amelia studied history at the University of Texas, where she earned a doctorate, becoming an authority on the Battle of the Alamo. Her research provided the names of the defenders later memorialized at the San Antonio shrine. Another Williams daughter, Harriett Emily, married Hubert leland Atkinson, who assumed management of the estate after Emma's death. Family descendants have since continued to manage and maintain the historic property for well over a century. The Williams-Atkinson House features Folk Victorian styling with a modified two-story gable front and wing plan, assymetrical façade, and double gallery porches on the front and rear. Other details include cutaway bays on the front and side elevations, spindlework friezes and jigsawn corner brackets and balustrades. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 2006
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Thomas Herbert Williams, a South Carolina native and former Confederate officer, arrived in Milam County in 1866 and built a 5,000-acre cotton empire complete with his own gin. He died before finishing the family home, so his widow Emma completed the Folk Victorian house in 1893 and ran the farm herself. After Emma's death in 1897, eldest daughter Amelia raised her four sisters — all five earned college degrees — and Amelia went on to earn a doctorate in history at the University of Texas, becoming a leading authority on the Alamo whose research recovered the names of its defenders.
Why it matters
The homestead is a striking reminder that a post-Civil War Texas farm family could send five daughters to college and produce one of the historians who shaped how Americans remember the Alamo.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Thomas Herbert Williams
- · Emma Massengale Williams
- · Amelia Worthington Williams
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
First Girl's Tomato Club in Texas
Cameron, TX
In 1912 Milam County launched Texas's first Girls' Tomato Clubs, teaching rural young women to grow and can tomatoes on a tenth of an acre. At the U.S. Department of Agriculture's request, high school principal Edna Westbrook Trigg organized eleven clubs for members aged ten to eighteen. The girls sold their canned goods at fairs from Rockdale to the State Fair in Dallas, several funding college with the proceeds—making the clubs a direct forerunner of 4-H.
Mrs. Edna Westbrook Trigg
Cameron, TX
Edna Westbrook Trigg, a Milam County native and schoolteacher, was tapped by the U.S. Department of Agriculture in 1911 to supervise Texas' first Girls' Tomato Club, teaching rural girls to grow and can their own produce. Her 1912 canning exhibit at the Milano Fair was a state first, and in 1916 she became Texas' first county home demonstration agent. She went on to train other agents at the College of Industrial Arts, now Texas Woman's University.
Katy Hamman Stricker Library
Calvert, TX
When railroads turned Calvert into a cotton-trade center, its women joined the national club movement, chartering an American Woman's League chapter in 1908. On land donated by Ella Hamman, the league built this Prairie-style chapter house in 1909, complete with a commissioned bas-relief titled "Woman's Mission." Though the league soon folded, local women revived it as the Calvert Woman's Club and ran a community library from the building for decades.
La Recluta and La Escuelita
Rockdale, TX
After coal was discovered near Rockdale and the railroad arrived, mining opened the district to labor by the 1890s, and many of the workers came north from Mexico during years of revolution. Settling on land north of the tracks, these families named their community La Recluta — "recruitment" — sharecropping to feed themselves while the men worked the mines, often paid in tokens good only at the company commissary. Their story holds both hardship, including a 1913 cave-in that trapped miners for six days, and hope, embodied in La Escuelita, the little schoolhouse where children of Spanish-speaking homes were taught in English.