Zachary Taylor Fulmore
Austin, Travis County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Jurist, educator and author. Born in North Carolina, he came in 1870 to Texas, where he married Luella Robertson, Granddaughter of founder of Robertson Colony. Practiced law in Austin; also filled numerous commitments to State and City. Chairman, Texas Codifying Commission. One of organizers of Texas State School for Colored Deaf, Dumb, and Blind. Charter member and President, Texas State Historical Association. Chairman,City School Trustees. Wrote a most valuable book, "History and Geography of Texas As Told In County Names."
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
A jurist, educator, and author born in North Carolina, Zachary Taylor Fulmore came to Texas in 1870 and built a public-spirited career in Austin. He chaired the state's codifying commission and city school trustees, helped organize a state school for Black deaf and blind students, and served as a charter member and president of the Texas State Historical Association. He also wrote a well-regarded study of Texas county names.
Why it matters
Fulmore's work in law, education, and historical preservation helped build the civic and cultural institutions that shaped modern Texas.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Zachary Taylor Fulmore
- · Luella Robertson
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Ira Hobart Evans
Austin, TX
New Hampshire–born Ira Hobart Evans rose to major in the Union Army during the Civil War, earned the Medal of Honor, and stood in the honor guard at President Lincoln's funeral in 1865. Sent to Texas and later returning as a Freedmen's Bureau agent, he won election to the state legislature and in 1870 became the youngest and first Republican Speaker of the Texas House. He went on to lead Texas railroad and land ventures and served for nearly a decade as president of the board of Tillotson College, a forerunner of today's Huston-Tillotson University, remodeling this Austin house with architect Alfred Giles.
Site of Samuel Huston College
Austin, TX
Samuel Huston College grew from a school for African American youth founded by Rev. George O. Richardson in Dallas in 1876, which moved to Austin in 1878 and, with support from the Freedmen's Aid Society, acquired a campus on East 12th Street. Renamed in 1887 for an Iowa benefactor, it weathered repeated closures before reopening in 1900 and becoming a senior college in 1926. In 1952 it merged with Tillotson College to form Huston-Tillotson, which continues today.
Colored Teachers State Association of Texas Building
Austin, TX
This 1952 building was designed by John S. Chase, the first licensed African American architect in Texas, and originally housed the Colored Teachers State Association of Texas. Founded in 1884, the association won a series of civil rights gains for Black students and teachers in a segregated state. Its flat-roofed, industrial-influenced modern design served the organization until it dissolved in 1966.
Wesley United Methodist Church
Austin, TX
As the Civil War ended and emancipation came to Texas, freedpeople across Austin sought to worship in congregations of their own rather than in the segregated pews of their former enslavers. Wesley United Methodist grew out of exactly that moment, founded through the joint efforts of a white missionary and a Black minister and first meeting in the basement of the very church many members had attended as slaves. From an 1867 stone sanctuary with a dirt floor it grew into one of the leading Black churches in Texas, hosting classes for Samuel Huston College and a home for community and mission work.