Yettie Kersting
Liberty, Liberty County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Henrietta "Yettie" Kersting was born in Giddings, Texas, on October 17th, 1863, daughter of Louisa (Johnson) and Henry Kersting, a German immigrant farmer. Yettie received a public education and early business experience in Lee County. At the turn of the century she settled in the prosperous oil boomtown of Liberty and quickly established a millinery business. With her business thriving, she saved her money and soon made investments, primarily in real estate. She acquired a two-story building across from the courthouse, moved her millinery business to the lower floor, rented half to another business and maintained her own rooming house upstairs. Eventually Yettie opened the White Kitchen Café, which she operated until her retirement in 1940.Her vision of a hospital came to fruition in 1935, when at age seventy-two she left the bulk of her estate to the people of Liberty County for a hospital. In 1940, construction of one unit of the hospital was started at a cost of $18,000. This first hospital clinic, located on Sam Houston Street, was dedicated on October 18th, 1941, and fittingly received Yettie Kersting as its first patient. Five weeks later on November 22, she died in the hospital she had founded and given to "The relief of suffering humanity."Yettie Kersting's memory is firmly rooted in the community of Liberty and the hospital that her dedication, thrift and generosity made possible. Her philanthropic endeavors in the community still resonate today. She envisioned a medical facility dedicated to the health needs of citizens, no matter their financial circumstances or ethnic background. Through hard work, selfless demeanor and love for her community, this early businesswoman made a great impact.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Born in 1863 to a German immigrant farmer, Yettie Kersting turned a millinery shop into a small empire of enterprise in the oil boomtown of Liberty — buying a building across from the courthouse, renting space, running a rooming house, and later opening the White Kitchen Café. Thrifty and shrewd, she invested in real estate and, at age seventy-two in 1935, left the bulk of her estate to build a hospital for Liberty County. Fittingly, when the clinic opened in 1941 she became its first patient, dying there five weeks later in the institution her generosity had created.
Why it matters
She stands out as a self-made businesswoman of her era whose philanthropy gave her county a hospital open to all, regardless of means or background — a lasting act of civic vision.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Henrietta "Yettie" Kersting
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Henry O. Ager Home
Liberty, TX
Louisiana native Henry O. Ager settled in Liberty, Texas, as a druggist in 1884 and, after meeting Bridgett Garrity at the 1893 Chicago World's Fair, married and built this classical revival home in 1905. Beyond his drugstore, Ager served as county clerk, school board president, and bank president, while his family later opened the town's Ager Theatre. Built of cypress with a wraparound gallery, the house has remained in the family for more than a century.
Tarver Abstract Company
Liberty, TX
For more than a century the Tarver Abstract Company has traced land titles for the citizens of Liberty County. Tennessee-born Thomas Carey Tarver, a Confederate veteran who once rode as a Wells Fargo messenger, bought a decade-old abstract business in 1903 and gave it his name. Over the years the firm evolved from producing abstracts of title to issuing regulated title insurance, becoming an anchor of Liberty's downtown business district.
Site of Liberty's Ursuline Convent
Liberty, TX
In 1859 Bishop John Mary Odin sent Ursuline sisters from Galveston to Liberty, where the energetic French nun Mother Ambroise led the purchase of this site and the building of a convent and girls' school. Prominent local families enrolled their daughters as boarders and day students. The upheaval of the Civil War thinned attendance, and the school closed in 1866; the buildings were dismantled two decades later.
Ott Hotel
Liberty, TX
When oil strikes at Batson and South Liberty brought a boom to Liberty in the 1920s, John Joshua Ott and his wife Sallie hired contractor Elza Burch to build a railroad hotel beside the Texas & New Orleans tracks. Completed in late 1928, the two-story brick building offered fifty rooms to the traveling salesmen—"drummers"—and to automobile tourists rolling in on the Old Spanish Trail highway. Its Craftsman-style porch and rafter tails still mark it as a landmark, and it stayed in the Ott family until 2002.