Williamson County
Georgetown, Williamson County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Created March 13, 1848, and organized by a special committee approved by Gov. George T. Wood and the 2nd Legislature of the State of Texas, with Georgetown designated as county seat. The county was named for Robert McAlpin Williamson (nicknamed "Three-Legged Willie", because of his pegleg), a veteran of Battle of San Jacinto, and one of the original members of the Supreme Court of the Republic of Texas. Lying in the Brazos River watershed and in basin of San Gabriel River, county has widely varied soils of blackland, limestone, and prairie types. Before the creation of Williamson County, settlements were situated at Tumlinson's Fort, Kenney's Fort, and other locations. Early mills made lumber, flour, and cloth. Southwestern University, heir to charter granted by the Republic of Texas in 1840 to Rutersville College, was established in Georgetown in 1877. Settlers were mainly of Anglo-American, Czech, German, Mexican, and Swedish ethnic groups. Eight incorporated towns and many smaller communities have developed. Population increased to 38,000 (with 15,000 registered voters) by 1970. This courthouse -- built in 1910 at cost of $96,000 -- is the third for the county. C.H. Page was architect. (1970) Supplemental plaque: African Americans, the largest ethnic group among pioneer settlers, comprised ten percent of the county's population in 1850 and more than nineteen percent by 1860.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Carved out of the young state of Texas in 1848, Williamson County took its name from Robert McAlpin Williamson — the peg-legged "Three-Legged Willie," a San Jacinto veteran and early justice of the Republic's Supreme Court. Georgetown grew as the seat of a county whose blackland and prairie soils drew a strikingly mixed population of Anglo, Czech, German, Mexican, Swedish, and — as the supplemental plaque records — a large community of African Americans, who made up nearly a fifth of residents by 1860. Early mills turned out lumber, flour, and cloth, and Southwestern University traced its charter back to the Republic itself.
Why it matters
The county's story captures how a frontier Texas community was built by many peoples at once, a diversity often erased from the standard pioneer narrative.
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Related people
- · Robert McAlpin Williamson
- · George T. Wood
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Caldwell-Palm House
Round Rock, TX
T. J. Caldwell and his wife Letitia raised this sturdy limestone house on the eve of the Civil War in 1860, quarrying its walls from the surrounding land and, as the marker plainly records, relying on the labor of enslaved people to build it. Their daughter Mary married Swedish immigrant Sven William Palm, whose family kept the property for more than a century. Around it grew the small Caldwell Heights community of school, cotton gin, and farmsteads.
Harrell Cemetery
Round Rock, TX
Jacob and Mary Harrell came to Texas with Robertson's colony in 1833 and were among the first to settle the site that became Austin, where Jacob sold his homestead for the grounds of the State Capitol and served as mayor in 1847. In 1848 the family moved to Jacob's headright near this spot, helping organize the new Williamson County government. The cemetery holds Harrell family members and one of the family's enslaved people.
Palm Valley Lutheran Church
Round Rock, TX
Swedish immigrants led by the Palm family settled this Williamson County valley in the 1850s, and in 1861 Andrew John Nelson and three helpers built a log church that also served as the settlement's first school. The congregation formally organized in 1870, replaced its log meetinghouse, and in 1894 raised the Gothic Revival sanctuary that stands today. Palm Valley remains one of the enduring landmarks of Swedish Lutheran settlement in central Texas.
Round Rock Cemetery
Round Rock, TX
Established in the early 1850s, this burial ground holds more than 2,000 graves, its oldest legible stone marking eleven-year-old Angeline Scott in 1851. A half-acre served as a segregated burial ground for enslaved people and freedmen in the nineteenth century, and among the veterans and pioneers rests outlaw Sam Bass, who died here in 1878 two days after being shot by Texas Rangers. The cemetery's roll of doctors, ministers, and tradesmen reads like a directory of early Round Rock.