Search Markers

Snyder, TX

A Vermont native who came west at nineteen, J. Wright Mooar became one of the most prolific buffalo hunters of the American plains, establishing with his brother the first hunting camp in the Texas Panhandle in 1873. In 1876 he killed a rare albino buffalo in Scurry County, a hide later displayed at the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair. Over his career he shot some 22,000 buffalo and earned the respect of Comanche chief Quanah Parker, who became his friend in later years.

Snyder, TX

In 1873 J. Wright Mooar and his brother John established the first buffalo-hunting camp in the Texas Panhandle, part of the hide trade that swept the southern plains. Wright's marksmanship became legendary—he downed a rare albino buffalo in Scurry County in 1876 and claimed some 22,000 kills, a skill that even earned the respect of Comanche chief Quanah Parker, later a friend. The brothers turned to ranching here in 1877, and Wright became a pillar of Scurry County life.

Bowie, TX

Born in Bowie in 1899, James V. Allred worked as a newsboy and shoeshine boy before studying law and, as a district attorney, building a reputation fighting the Ku Klux Klan. As attorney general and then governor from 1935 to 1939, he battled monopolies and championed a sweeping New Deal–era agenda, signing Texas's first old-age assistance law and adding Social Security provisions, aid to dependent children, and teacher retirement. He also appointed Sarah T. Hughes as the first woman on the Texas judiciary and encouraged a young Lyndon B. Johnson, later serving as a federal judge until his death in 1959.

Groesbeck, TX

Lafayette Lumpkin Foster packed several careers into Gilded Age and Progressive-era Texas: state representative and speaker of the house in the mid-1880s, president of Texas A&M at the turn of the century, and an early appointee to the Railroad Commission created by Governor James S. Hogg in 1891. That commission began by policing shipping rates but grew, over the following decades, into the powerful body that regulated the state's booming oil and gas industry. Foster's tenure set an early tone of professionalism for an agency whose reach would eventually help supply Allied armies with fuel in World War II.

Johnson City vicinity, TX

Born in Louisiana in 1846 and brought to Texas as a boy, Joseph Wilson Baines served in the Civil War, then built a career as a teacher, lawyer, newspaper publisher, and public servant, holding the office of Texas Secretary of State from 1883 to 1887. He practiced law in Blanco before his death in 1906. His daughter Rebecca married Sam Ealy Johnson and became the mother of Lyndon Baines Johnson, the nation's 36th president.

Refugio, TX

A Georgia-born poet and legislator, A. M. Hobby resigned from the Texas Legislature in 1862 to raise a battalion for the Confederacy, commanding the 8th Texas Infantry in the defense of the Gulf coast. His men repelled Union bombardments at Corpus Christi, covered the Confederate withdrawal from the lower Rio Grande, and fought in the 1864 Red River Campaign. This marker honors both Hobby and the Refugio County men who filled his regiment's ranks.

Victoria, TX

A Victoria lawyer elected to the legislature in 1861 and to Congress from 1872 to 1874, William Pinckney McLean was appointed by Governor James S. Hogg to the newly created Railroad Commission of Texas, serving from 1891. First charged with regulating shipping rates, the Commission soon took on oil and gas—pipelines in 1917, conservation in 1919, and full regulation in the 1930s, when East Texas poured out 1.7 million barrels a day and martial law enforced its rules.

Chicago, IL

This marker stands where the Home Insurance Building rose in 1884, designed by engineer William Le Baron Jenney and widely regarded as the world's first skyscraper. By carrying its weight on a steel-and-iron frame rather than thick masonry walls, Jenney's ten-story building opened the way for the tall buildings that would define the modern city. The later Field Building was raised on the same historic ground.

Nazareth, TX

For ninety years beginning in 1905, Home Mercantile supplied the German Catholic town of Nazareth with groceries, fresh meat, and dairy. The original wood-frame store had living quarters above; in 1928 a new brick-and-concrete building—the town's first—rose in its place and later housed the post office from 1937 to 1980. Beyond commerce, it hosted poker games, amateur boxing, and a community bulletin board.

Rainbow, TX

A.J. 'Jack' Hart settled near a Brazos River crossing that still bears his name and became a builder of both structures and institutions. A Confederate veteran, he helped organize Somervell County in 1875 and served as state legislator and later county judge. In 1884 he raised this home of native stone and hand-hewn lumber, a landmark of the county he helped create.

Round Rock, TX

A. J. Nelson, a rancher and banker who emigrated from Sweden, built this house in 1860 with the labor of Swedish masons who worked off the cost of their ocean passage. It stands as a landmark of the Swedish settlement that took root around Round Rock.

Nacogdoches, TX

Adolphus Sterne, born in Cologne in 1801, became one of Nacogdoches's most influential citizens—serving as alcalde under Mexican rule and later as a member of the Congress of the Republic of Texas. His home was famous for its open door, and General Sam Houston lodged here both before and after his marriage. Sterne died in 1852 and lies buried in the town he helped shape.

Glasgow, KY

In this Glasgow house Arthur Krock (1886–1974) grew up with his grandparents before rising to become the "dean of Washington newsmen." From the Louisville papers he went to the capital, joined the New York Times in 1927, and over a 60-year career knew eleven presidents and won four Pulitzer Prizes. Joel Cheek, a founder of Maxwell House Coffee, also once lived here.

Presidio vicinity, TX

Ben Leaton, remembered as the first Anglo-American farmer in Presidio County, acquired this adobe building on the Rio Grande in August 1848. Ever since it has been known as Fort Leaton, a fortified trading and farming outpost on the far West Texas frontier just as the region passed under U.S. control. The site marks the beginnings of Anglo settlement in one of the most remote corners of Texas.

Uvalde, TX

This Uvalde house, built in 1893, became the home of Bertha Dalton, daughter of a retired sea captain who bought it in 1905. Miss Dalton began teaching at seventeen and gave 56 years to Texas schools, spending nearly half a century in Uvalde, where she served as high school principal from 1917 to 1951. Beyond the classroom she quietly paid to send many of her students on to college.

Belton, TX

Built in 1866 of nearby limestone — its mortar bound with horsehair — this Belton home belonged to Captain A. J. Harris, a Confederate veteran who went on to serve as a state senator, lawyer, and teacher at Salado College. The house is also remembered as the birthplace of his grandson, Walton Harris Walker, who became a noted general in World War II. In one modest limestone dwelling, two very different chapters of American military history meet.

Jefferson, TX

Charles Gibbs Graham came to Texas as a boy in 1843 and settled in the riverport town of Jefferson around 1850. He served the Confederacy as a captain and was wounded at the 1864 Battle of Mansfield, then returned to build a life as a leading merchant and cotton broker, raising the Victorian home marked here in 1885. His descendants occupied it for three generations.

Brownsville, TX

Built around 1850, this was the home of Charles Stillman, the entrepreneur who founded Brownsville and, through M. Kenedy and Company, opened the Rio Grande to steamboat traffic — dominating much of the commerce of northern Mexico in the mid-19th century. The house was also the birthplace of his son James Stillman, who rose to lead New York's National City Bank around the turn of the century. From a border town, the family's reach extended into American high finance.

Brownsville, TX

Merchant, ship owner, and rancher Charles Stillman came to the mouth of the Rio Grande in 1828 and went on to found the city of Brownsville in 1849–50 within the old Espíritu Santo land grant. This house was built around 1850 for his Connecticut-born bride, Elizabeth Goodrich, complete with a separate kitchen, cisterns, and patio typical of pre–Civil War border architecture. Stillman became one of the most powerful commercial figures of the lower Rio Grande.

Clarksville, TX

Charles DeMorse (1816–1887) was a pioneer soldier, statesman, and newspaperman who founded and edited the Northern Standard from 1842 to 1887, the region's first and most influential newspaper. Around two log rooms built in 1833 he raised a larger home where he lived until his death, and which his descendants long occupied afterward.

San Benito, TX

Sam A. Robertson, a wealthy civil engineer who saw farming promise in the Rio Grande Valley, began the town of San Benito in 1904 and served as its first sheriff and postmaster. He built irrigation canals and a railroad network linking farms to markets, and developed recreational spots at Padre Island and Boca Chica. The thick-walled, high-windowed house he and his wife Adele built in 1911 doubled as a fortress against cross-border bandit raids during a turbulent era on the frontier.

San Augustine, TX

Born in Georgia in 1808, Stephen William Blount came to Texas in 1835 and signed the Texas Declaration of Independence before joining the Army of Texas in the fight for independence. He went on to serve his adopted home as the first county clerk of San Augustine County and the first district clerk of the First Judicial District, living out his life in the town until 1890.

Palestine, TX

Congressman Alexander W. Gregg lived in this Palestine house, built between 1886 and 1892, at the peak of a career that carried him from the Texas Senate to the U.S. Congress from 1903 to 1919. A University of Virginia–trained lawyer, he was instrumental in securing the federal seawall that protected Galveston from the kind of catastrophe the 1900 hurricane had inflicted. His home stands as a reminder of the era's turn toward public works and disaster protection.

Independence, TX

Dr. Asa Hoxey built this home at Independence in 1833, when the settlement lay in Mexican Texas on the eve of revolution. As a physician and prominent figure, Hoxey hosted many of the leading men of the era, and his house became a gathering point during Texas's formative years. The state marked the site in 1936 as part of its centennial commemorations.

Dripping Springs, TX

Dr. Joseph M. Pound and his wife Sarah raised the first log rooms of this Hill Country home in 1853, using hand-hewn timbers, square nails, and enslaved labor. The house served the frontier as church, hospital, and waystation — Methodist circuit riders preached here, and the sick came rich or poor. Pound had soldiered as a private in the Mexican War and would serve as a Confederate surgeon in the Civil War.

Austin, TX

This marker records a vanished homestead in what is now Austin, noting that the house of Effie Cara and Wylie Wilson Bennett once stood here alongside its windmill. Windmills were essential to Central Texas households, drawing groundwater in a region where surface water was unreliable, and their presence signals the era of family farms and ranch homes that preceded the city's growth. The marker preserves the memory of an ordinary Texas family and the place they called home.

Salado, TX

Elijah Sterling Clack Robertson (1820–1879) built this house between 1856 and 1860 in Salado, then a rising community in central Texas. Remembered as a pioneer, soldier, and jurist, Robertson also helped found Salado College, an early educational venture on the Texas frontier. The State of Texas erected the marker in 1936 to honor his role in the region's settlement.

Victoria, TX

Born at Burgos, Mexico, in 1765, Martín De León rose as a Spanish army captain before turning empresario. Mexican land grants in 1824 and 1829 let him settle scores of families and found the town of Victoria—the only Texas colony where Mexican customs and traditions predominated. He died there in 1833.

New Braunfels, TX

Ferdinand Lindheimer arrived among the German immigrants who founded New Braunfels, having already taken up arms in the Texas Revolution. He spent decades cataloging the plants of his adopted state so thoroughly that he became known as the father of Texas botany, with numerous species bearing his name. For two decades he also edited the Neu-Braunfels Zeitung, one of the influential German-language newspapers that gave the community its voice.

Carrollton, KY

This was the home of General William O. Butler, a Kentucky soldier and statesman whose career spanned the young republic's formative wars. Born in 1791, he fought at the River Raisin, Pensacola, and New Orleans during the War of 1812, served on Andrew Jackson's staff, and won praise for heroism in the Mexican War. A lawyer and congressman, he ran unsuccessfully for governor, vice president, and the Senate, and in 1861 served as a Kentucky commissioner to a last-ditch peace conference.

West Columbia, TX

George B. McKinstry joined Austin's Colony in 1829 and gave himself to the Texas cause—fighting at Velasco, serving as a delegate to the 1832 convention, and becoming chief justice of Brazoria County. His modest home, built around 1830, holds a somber place in Texas memory: here, on December 27, 1836, Stephen F. Austin—the 'Father of Texas'—died. The state marked the house during the 1936 centennial.

Fulton, TX

George W. Fulton was born in Philadelphia in 1810 and served in the Texan Army during the revolution of 1836 before pursuing a distinguished engineering career elsewhere. He returned to Texas and became one of the coastal region's great cattle barons, a rise that mirrored the post-Civil War boom in the Texas beef trade. The town of Fulton on Aransas Bay carries his name.

Hillsborough, NC

During the Civil War the North Carolina town of Hillsborough served as a camp and waypoint for troops, and this house was home to the officer who commanded the forces stationed here. In the war's final days the surrounding Piedmont saw large armies on the move as the Confederacy collapsed. The dwelling survives as a quiet witness to those crowded, uncertain months.

Palacios, TX

Horace Yeamans arrived as a member of Stephen F. Austin's 1829 colony, among the first Anglo settlers of Mexican Texas, and helped organize the Tres Palacios Baptist Church. His homesite sat on land granted for his service in the army of the Republic of Texas, and a shipwright built the house here in the 1850s. It stands as a link to the founding generation of Anglo Texas.

Woodville, TX

This Woodville house stands on land granted in 1838 to Dr. Josiah Wheat, an early Tyler County settler who later donated acreage for the county seat. William G. McDaniel built the earliest part of the home in 1848, and its gallery over the front porch famously served as sleeping quarters for jurors when housing ran short during court sessions. In 1918 it was bought by Josiah Wheat's great-grandson, attorney James Edward Wheat — a mayor, school-board president, and first chairman of the Texas State Historical Survey Committee — who enlarged the family home.

Independence, TX

In 1855, when Texas was barely a decade into statehood and Independence was a thriving crossroads of early Anglo settlement, John Hoblett Seward and his wife Laura Jane raised a home of hand-sawed cedar. Buildings like this one, marked by the State of Texas during its 1936 Centennial, anchored the small farming communities of Washington County. The Sewards' long lives spanned the frontier era, the Civil War, and the coming of the railroads.

Helena, TX

John Ruckman left Pennsylvania in 1856, landing at Indianola on his 21st birthday to join his brother Thomas, a co-founder of Helena. He spent his life in Karnes County as farmer, rancher, postmaster, merchant, pioneer banker, and Presbyterian leader, and served as a Confederate lieutenant during the Civil War. In 1878 he built this house of Florida cypress; he is buried in the Helena Cemetery.

Town of Huntington, NY

The oldest part of this homestead was raised in 1692, when Huntington was a small colonial farming town; it was later demoted to a barn after a "new" house went up in 1810. That newer house belonged to Jesse Whitman — grandfather of Walt Whitman, who was born nearby in the West Hills and grew into one of America's greatest poets. The family's deep roots in this Long Island landscape helped form the writer who would later sing of the young nation itself.

Marshall, TX

A South Carolina-born lawyer who prospered in Marshall, Pendleton Murrah entered the Texas Legislature in 1857 and, after Civil War service as a cavalry colonel, became governor from 1863 to 1865, the most trying years of the Confederacy. He governed a state drowning in debt and stripped of men and supplies; the cornmeal cake at his inaugural dinner told the story of wartime scarcity. After the Union split the South by seizing the Mississippi, Texas became the main supply line for the Confederacy's western half.

Graham, TX

Lewis Pinkney Brooks was a Civil War veteran who, like many Southerners in the hard years after the war, sought a fresh start in Texas—riding a mule all the way from Georgia in 1866. He settled in Young County and by 1875 had built a sturdy home from stone quarried on his own land. The house endures as a Recorded Texas Historic Landmark.

Navasota, TX

Born in Virginia in 1853, George D. Neal came to Texas with his family in 1866 and, after studying at Baylor, was admitted to the bar in 1876. He settled in Navasota in 1881 and bought this residence in 1883, building a career as county judge, city attorney, and state senator. Elected lieutenant governor in 1902 and again in 1904, he served alongside Governor S. W. T. Lanham before retiring to practice law in 1907.

Sunnyvale, CA · est. 1960

Martin Murphy Jr. reached California in 1844 as part of the first wagon train to haul across the Sierra Nevada, an arduous crossing that opened the overland route. Settling in the Santa Clara Valley, he founded Sunnyvale and built his home here from prefabricated lumber shipped around Cape Horn in 1849. The Murphy family lived on the property for more than a century, until the city acquired it in 1953.

San Augustine, TX

Built in 1839, in the days of the Republic of Texas, this house was purchased in 1847 by Matthew Cartwright, a member of a prominent East Texas family. Remarkably, it remained in the hands of his descendants for generations, and the State of Texas honored it with a marker during the 1936 centennial of Texas independence. Homes like it anchored San Augustine as one of the oldest Anglo-American settlements in the region.

Loveland, OH

This marker notes the Loveland-area home of Matt Hamill, a standout college wrestler who won three straight NCAA Division III national championships in 1997, 1998, and 1999. Hamill, who is deaf, went on to compete as a professional mixed-martial-arts fighter and became widely known as an inspirational figure.

Burkburnett, TX

A Tennessee-born Union veteran who had served under Ulysses S. Grant, Monroe Dodson came to Texas in 1867 and settled this stretch of Wichita County in 1878 as its first permanent resident. He helped raise the local church, school, and Masonic lodge, registered one of the county's earliest cattle brands, and raised eleven children on the open range.

Houston, TX

This site marks where the home of Margaret McCormick stood on April 21, 1836 — the day the decisive Battle of San Jacinto was fought nearby, winning Texas its independence from Mexico. Her husband Arthur had died here in 1825, and Margaret herself lost her life in 1854 when the home burned. The marker ties an ordinary settler family's homestead to one of the turning points of the Texas Revolution.

Salado, TX

Orville Thomas Tyler (1810–1886) was a pioneer Texan who wore many hats in the young state — county judge, member of the Legislature, and president of the board that ran Salado College. He built this home in 1857, and the State of Texas marked it in 1936. It survives as a witness to the leadership that knit frontier communities into governed towns.

Nacogdoches, TX

Peter Ellis Bean arrived in Texas with Nolan's 1800 expedition and went on to a remarkable career—imprisoned in Mexico, then a soldier in Mexico's struggle for independence, and later commandant at Fort Terán and Nacogdoches in the early 1830s. This 1936 state marker notes a home erected in 1829 near a sawmill he owned, a foothold on the Texas frontier for one of its more colorful adventurers.

Cross Plains, TX

In 1919 the Howard family moved to this Cross Plains home, where their son Robert Ervin Howard would write hundreds of stories and more than 700 poems in his bedroom before his death in 1936. Encouraged by his mother and selling his first story to Weird Tales at eighteen, Howard created Conan the Barbarian and effectively founded the sword-and-sorcery genre; the corruption-and-barbarism themes running through his work were sharpened by the oil boom he watched transform his small town. He took his own life at thirty, but his characters have since been translated into 23 languages and adapted across film, gaming, and print.

Salt Lake City, UT

This marker identifies the home where one of the earliest Sunday schools associated with Salt Lake City's pioneer settlers was held. In the early Latter-day Saint community, private homes doubled as the first schoolrooms and meetinghouses before dedicated buildings existed. It commemorates the humble beginnings of religious education among Utah's founding families.

Paris, TX

Sam Bell Maxey was a Kentucky-born West Point graduate brevetted for gallantry in the Mexican-American War before settling in Paris, Texas, as a district attorney. He rose to major general in the Confederate army, commanding in the Tennessee and Mississippi campaigns and then the Indian Territory from 1863 to 1865, where he organized three brigades of Native American troops for the Red River Campaign. After the war he served two terms in the United States Senate from 1875 to 1887.

Strawn, TX

Tennessee-born Stephen Bethel Strawn came to Palo Pinto County in 1859 as one of its first settlers, married the next year, and served in the state troops guarding the frontier during the Civil War. He built this house in the mid-1870s and in 1880 founded the town of Strawn to entice the Texas & Pacific Railway through the area. A rancher, landowner, banker, and investor in local coal mining, he embodied the many roles a frontier town-founder played.

Whitewright, TX

This colonial-style home in Whitewright was built by T. H. Sears, son of the pioneer Christopher C. Sears, on part of the family's original land grant. A local show place since 1909, it was named a Recorded Texas Historic Landmark in 1967. The house speaks to a second generation putting down permanent roots on land first claimed in Texas's frontier era.

Columbus, TX

This modest "Early Texas" cottage, built in 1868 of cypress and pine fastened with square nails, stayed in the McCormick family for a century. Its builder, George McCormick, came to Texas from Virginia in 1858 and served in the Confederate Army before turning to law and public life. He helped draft the Texas Constitution of 1876, served as state attorney general from 1878 to 1880, and later sat for years as a district judge.

Mitchell, SD

This marker identifies the site of the second Corn Palace in Mitchell, South Dakota. Built to showcase the agricultural bounty of the surrounding prairie and decorated in murals made of corn and grain, the Corn Palace was a booster attraction meant to draw settlers, business, and visitors to the young state around the turn of the 20th century. The 'second' palace was one in a succession of buildings that culminated in the famous structure still standing today.

Anahuac, TX

Thomas Jefferson Chambers (1802–1865) was one of early Texas's most consequential officials, serving as surveyor general in 1829 and as the sole superior judge before independence. An active champion of the independence cause, he later sat in the 1861 Secession Convention as Texas left the Union. A town—Chambersea, later Anahuac—and a Texas county still carry his name.

San Augustine, TX

Thomas S. McFarland was a surveyor, soldier, and statesman of the Texas Revolution and early republic. He served as aide-de-camp at the 1832 Battle of Nacogdoches, laid out the town of San Augustine in 1833, fought in the Texan army in 1836, and later sat in the Congress of the Republic of Texas before serving as chief justice of San Augustine County. The State of Texas marked his home in 1936 to honor a founder of East Texas civic life.

Salado, TX

Wellborn Barton (1821–1883) was a pioneer physician who practiced across this region of central Texas and served for many years as a trustee of Salado College, founded in 1866. His home stood where two great arteries of the era passed by — the old military road and the Chisholm cattle trail. The house was built by contractor John Hendrickson.

Eureka, TX

Whitney Montgomery was born in Navarro County in 1877 and began writing poetry at fifteen, going on to publish more than 500 poems in major magazines and win numerous prizes. After moving to Dallas in 1927 he edited and published the 'Kaleidograph' magazine and press and helped lead the Poetry Society of Texas. His family erected this marker in 1967, incising his poem 'I Own a Home' at its base.

Columbus, TX

William Christian Papenberg came to Texas from Illinois in 1899 as a schoolteacher and settled in Columbus in 1904, soon trading the classroom for public office. He served as district clerk of Colorado County for a remarkable thirty-eight years. The house he and his wife Emma built in 1914 has stayed in the family and was named a Recorded Texas Historic Landmark in 1973.