Historic Markers in Texas

Chappell Hill, TX

Built in 1853 by Chappell Hill's first postmaster, the Jacob Haller House reflects the craftsmanship of early Texas building, framed with hand-hewn local cedar and clad in cypress clapboard beneath Victorian detailing. It later became the home of a beloved country doctor, W. R. Campbell. The house survives as a window onto a small antebellum town's founding generation.

Sabine Pass, TX

A Louisiana native, Jacob H. Garner settled as a boy in southeast Texas in 1825, a decade before the fight for independence. In 1835 he joined the Texas Army and took part in the Grass Fight and the Siege of Bexar, service for which he later received land grants, then went on to hold a string of local offices from justice of the peace to district clerk. When war came again in 1861, he took up arms once more as a Confederate officer, a life of service spanning Texas's earliest struggles through the Civil War.

Austin, TX

This Victorian cottage was built in 1875 for architect Jacob Larmour, who had come to Austin with his family in 1871 and helped shape many of the growing city's commercial and residential buildings. His prominence earned him appointment as State Architect in 1879. Pharmacist Oscar G. Eckhardt bought the home in 1910 and it stayed in his family for over fifty years before being moved to this location in 1979.

Austin, TX

German immigrant Jacob Leser bought this Austin land in 1859 and built both a log cabin and a small factory for making soap and candles. Over the following decades he expanded the house with a stone wing, a porch, and Victorian brick-and-frame rooms, and his heirs lived here until 1951 before a restoring family enlarged it.

Fredericksburg, TX

Jacob Neffendorf sailed from Nassau in the German states aboard the barque Neptune in 1845, part of the wave of immigrants who settled the Texas Hill Country under the Adelsverein colonization scheme. He helped survey the Fredericksburg townsite and move families up from New Braunfels in 1846, receiving the standard town lot and ten-acre outlot and building a log cabin on Creek Street. Clearing land near Cross Mountain, he steadily assembled more than 200 acres, raised eight children with his wife Katherina, and served a term as Gillespie County treasurer.

Trinity, TX

Mississippi natives Jacob Pope Barnes and Elizabeth Ann Rankin married in 1860, came to Texas after the Civil War, and settled at Trinity in 1872, where Jacob opened a mercantile store and served as county treasurer until his death in 1877. Widowed at 43 with nine children to raise, Elizabeth kept the family and the business going for another thirty-five years, running the store with her eldest son. Her long stewardship anchored the young town's commercial life.

Dobbin, TX

Jacob Montgomery Shannon came to Texas as a teenager in the 1820s, when the land was still under Mexican rule, and by 1831 held a league of land where he built a plantation known as Shannon's Prairie. The cemetery began about 1840 and, in 1863, Shannon deeded two acres for a public burial ground, school, and church. Buried here are members of his family, some of the people he enslaved and their descendants, and several war veterans.

Woden, TX

When William Jacobs led his family and neighbors from Tennessee to southern Nacogdoches County, arriving on Christmas Day 1836, they brought with them a family burial ground atop a ridge above Carrizo Creek. In 1870 his daughter Paulina deeded the surrounding acres to the trustees of Jacobs Chapel Methodist Episcopal Church for worship, school, and burials; among those resting here are William and his wife Nancy and their son James, whose family lost seven of twelve children in the 1860s to Civil War wounds and typhoid.

Sattler, TX

Settlers in Comal County started Jacobs Creek School in 1867, leasing land for a dollar, and teacher Carl Pantermuehl soon built a teacher's residence beside it. The 1½-story cabin is a fine example of German vernacular building—hand-hewn Ashe juniper joined in half-timbered fachwerk, with limestone and brick worked in. After a newer school opened nearby, the schoolhouse was razed but the teacherage lived on as a home.

Galveston, TX

In 1885, widowed midwife Barbara Lenz Jacobs commissioned the noted Galveston architect Nicholas J. Clayton to design a two-story home for her family of six children. The double-gallery, side-hall house features pierced eaves and a plan tailored to the island's coastal climate. Three generations of the Jacobs family lived here across 84 years.

Wimberley, TX

Serving area residents since 1883, Jacobs Well Cemetery grew from a Hill Country settlement named for a natural spring in Cypress Creek, where many pioneers had migrated from South Carolina. Landowner James Spillar donated the burial ground after the death of early settler Moses Bond Egger, and the graves that followed hold Texas Rangers, a county sheriff, ranchers, teachers, and whole families lost to epidemics. Descendants formed an association in 1980 that still tends the vertical stones, wooden markers, and unmarked graves.

Calvert, TX

Jacques Adoue was the youngest of three French brothers who came to Texas in the 1860s and rose to become business leaders in Calvert, Dallas, and Galveston. This handsome store, built for the Collat, Adoue & Risser dry-goods firm, set an ambitious commercial tone for the town, and when Adoue died in 1906 of injuries from a Calvert cotton-compress fire, friends felt an era had passed with him.

Gonzales, TX

First mapped in 1825 as Market Square, this Gonzales public square had become known as Jail Square by 1836. That year, as Santa Anna's army advanced, Gonzales was burned by order of General Sam Houston to keep its buildings and supplies from falling into enemy hands—part of the desperate retreat known as the Runaway Scrape. Gonzales, already famed as the site of the war's opening 'Come and Take It' clash, thus sacrificed itself in the campaign for independence.

Luckenbach, TX

A German-born teacher who immigrated to the Texas Hill Country in 1846, Jakob Brodbeck never let go of a dream he first had at sea: to build a flying machine. Teaching in Fredericksburg, Luckenbach, and San Antonio to fund his work, he raised money by selling shares and, shortly after the Civil War, launched a coil-spring-powered airship north of San Antonio—it lifted off before the mechanism failed. Though he never rebuilt it, in 1967 Texas Governor John Connally dubbed him "the father of U.S. Aviation."

Corpus Christi, TX

James Jalufka, born in 1879 to Moravian Czech immigrants in Lavaca County, became a prominent South Texas cotton grower and a veteran of both the Spanish-American War and World War I. Around 1905 he built this house in Corpus Christi's "Old Irishtown" neighborhood. In 1944 it passed to Pete and Minnie Lee Govatos, part of the city's Greek community, before eventually being rescued from disrepair and moved to Heritage Park.

West Columbia, TX

James Price Phillips descended from one of the "Old Three Hundred" families of Stephen F. Austin's original Texas colony, and in 1920 he built this home to mark the birth of his youngest child. It rose on a former pecan orchard beside the Dr. Rees Porter home, which had once served as a hospital for soldiers of the Texas Revolution. The American foursquare house, with prairie and craftsman touches and columns of pale Gonzales brick, stayed in the family until 1978.

Temple, TX

Bell County native James Andrew Fletcher (1858–1944) rose to become a leading Temple businessman, in 1907 acquiring with his son Omar a business his brother-in-law had founded in 1881. It grew into Fletcher Enterprises, a prominent banking and industrial firm. San Antonio architect Ernest Scrivener designed this eclectic 1925 home for Fletcher and his wife Susan Jane, later named a Recorded Texas Historic Landmark.

Victoria, TX

On the coastal prairies of Victoria County stands this 1890 Victorian home of Florida pine and cypress, built for James A. McFaddin (1840–1916), a stockman whose life spanned the Republic of Texas, Confederate service, and the great cattle era that followed. Moving from Refugio in 1876, he was among the ranchers who reshaped Texas grazing by bringing in barbed wire and hardy Brahma cattle, and even founded the town that bears his name. His "M6" brand, registered in 1840, remained active long after him.

Falfurrias, TX

Kentucky-born James Abijah Brooks came to Texas in 1876 as a rancher and trail driver before joining the Texas Rangers, whom he served from 1882 to 1906. He chased down South Texas cattle thieves, helped block the notorious 1896 Fitzsimmons-Maher prizefight near El Paso, and later served in the legislature and for decades as county judge of the county that bears his name.

Kosse, TX

This state marker honors James Alfred Head, who fought for Texas independence and then served in the Congress of the young Republic of Texas in 1841-1842. Erected in 1962, it commemorates a member of the generation that won and then governed the short-lived Republic before annexation to the United States.

Kosse, TX

Georgia-born James A. Head came to Texas in 1835 and enlisted at San Felipe de Austin in Silas Parker's ranging company, earning a land grant and a place among the Texas Rangers who guarded the frontier during the war for independence. With his wife Elizabeth he farmed in what became Brazos County, served as justice of the peace and chief justice, and won election to the Sixth Congress of the Republic of Texas. By 1852 he worked some 17,800 acres and died at Headsville in 1872, father of thirteen children.

Austin, TX

James Allison York joined the fight for Texas independence, taking part in the capture of San Antonio in 1835 and serving in Captain Moseley Baker's company at the decisive Battle of San Jacinto in 1836. Kentucky-born, he was among the volunteers whose victory secured the Republic of Texas. He later settled in Lavaca County, where he died in 1869.

Midway, TX

James and Calpernia Mitchell left Virginia for Texas in 1833 and settled on a Mexican land grant during the years when Texas was passing from Mexican province to independent republic to statehood. James helped locate the seat of Montgomery County in 1837 and became one of Walker County's first commissioners in 1846, while the family's house and inn on the Old San Antonio Road offered rest to travelers and served for a decade as the area post office. The couple lie in a family cemetery near this spot.

Jewett, TX

Ohio-born James Elgin Anderson settled in Leon County in 1857, enlisted in the Confederate army in 1861 with Hood's Texas Brigade, and stood with Robert E. Lee at Appomattox in 1865. Returning home as a captain, he became a distinguished educator and married Julia Evans in 1867. The couple bought this property in 1875 and built a house with outside end chimneys, then remodeled it between 1885 and 1895 in the Victorian fashion, adding a second story and the exuberant Eastlake trim that still graces its porches and rooflines.

Austin, TX

In Austin's Tarrytown neighborhood stands the Mission Revival home of James and Leanna Walsh — its curved gable parapet, low tile roofs, and corbel-arch porch built from limestone quarried nearby. James was the third son of Irish immigrant William J. Walsh, whose Austin White Lime Company helped supply the mortar and plaster of a growing city; James carried on the family business and took part in the area's development.

Richards, TX

Alabama-born James Monroe Hurry and his Georgia-born wife Missouri built this house around 1904 with the help of several neighbors, a common act of rural mutual aid, to shelter their growing family. Its L-plan design, full porch, and bungalow touches are typical of early-20th-century Texas vernacular building. The home stayed in the Hurry family until 1962.

New Waverly, TX

James and Rhoda Winters led their large family from Tennessee to this land between the forks of the San Jacinto River in 1834, following the good report of two elder sons who had come ahead. When war with Mexico broke out, the family gave heavily to the cause: sons and sons-in-law fought in the 1836 Texas Revolution, and one son, James W. Winters, lived to help mark the San Jacinto battlefield in 1901, 65 years after fighting there. Family members went on to help settle half a dozen more Texas counties.

Azle, TX

A Tennessee-born physician, James Azle Steward reached this part of North Texas before 1860 and became one of its most respected pioneers. When he donated land for a townsite in 1883, the settlement — which had gone by several names — took his middle name and became Azle. He also gave ground for Ash Creek Cemetery and the Azle Christian Church, weaving himself into the community's civic and spiritual life.

Jacksboro, TX

James B. Dosher came to Texas in 1847 and rode with the Texas Rangers on the unsettled northern frontier before farming in Jack County. His life traced the arc of a hard border era, from Ranger companies to service with Confederate and Texas State forces during the Civil War. In 1870 he was scouting for the U.S. Army as a civilian guide when his gallantry at Bluff Creek earned him the Medal of Honor.

Georgetown, TX

James B. Williams left Kentucky with his bride and extended family, reaching the Berry's Creek area of Central Texas on Christmas Eve of 1848. He rode with his uncle's Texas Ranger company through the 1850s and early 1860s, when such units guarded the exposed frontier, and eventually made his permanent home in Glasscock Valley north of Georgetown. He and his wife Sarah raised thirteen children on the land they helped settle.

Liberty, TX

Kentucky-born James B. Woods arrived in Mexican Texas in 1830 and became a brilliant lawyer and orator in the Liberty District, elected alcalde (mayor) in 1834. As one of five delegates from Liberty, he signed the Texas Declaration of Independence at Washington-on-the-Brazos in March 1836 and served that year in the Texas Army. His life ended in tragedy after he killed a man in an election quarrel in 1851, dying soon after amid remorse.

Liberty, TX

Kentucky-born James B. Woods came to Texas in the era of its fight for independence and put his name to the Texas Declaration of Independence in 1836, joining the delegates who broke with Mexico and founded a new republic. He lived until 1851, part of the founding generation that shaped early Texas. The State of Texas raised this marker in his honor during the 1936 centennial of independence.

Woodville, TX

Raised of hand-hewn pine in 1842, this is remembered as the oldest home in Tyler County, built by the area's first Indian agent—a man appointed to that post by Sam Houston, the towering figure of the Republic of Texas. In the young Republic, an Indian agent stood at the fraught boundary between Anglo settlers pressing westward and the Native peoples already on the land. The house survives as a rare wooden witness to Texas's earliest days of statehood-in-waiting.

Rosebud, TX

James Bayliss Buck, born on a Tennessee tobacco farm in 1875, came to Texas as a child and in 1904 bought cheap land in Falls County, moving his family there and completing the farmhouse, barn, and outbuildings in 1909. Modeled on his father's home and framed in the Folk Victorian tradition with Queen Anne and Greek Revival touches, the house anchored the small Travis farming community. Buck's daughter Reba married neighbor Hubert Johnson, who later led the Waco Methodist Orphanage into a nationally recognized child-care institution and bought the family farm in 1948.

Fairfield, TX

James Bonner Rogers became sheriff of Freestone County in 1872, during a lawless stretch of Reconstruction-era Texas. After a deputy was shot in a chase, he pursued a band of horse thieves alone — only to be gunned down from ambush by two strangers thought to be the vengeful thieves. He died at 35, leaving a widow and three children.

Kenney, TX

James Bradford Pier, an Ohio native born in 1813, came to Texas in 1835 with his wife Lucy and settled near the early town of Travis. He served in the Texas Army during the war for independence, posted as a rear guard across from Harrisburg during the decisive Battle of San Jacinto in 1836. In peacetime he farmed, raised stock, taught, kept a store, served as justice of the peace, and became the Travis community's first postmaster.

Bailey's Prairie, TX

James Briton "Brit" Bailey came to Texas in 1818 with his wife and six children, settling the tallgrass expanse that still bears his name. He joined Stephen F. Austin's colony in 1824, served as a militia captain, and fought in the skirmishes that preceded the 1836 revolution. True to a fiercely proud reputation, he asked to be buried upright, facing west with his gun at his side, so that no one could ever look down on him.

Marfa, TX

James Buchanan Gillett came of age on the far western Texas frontier, trading a teenage cowboy's saddle for a Ranger's badge at nineteen during the turbulent late 1870s. His years of service coincided with the last decades of open-range conflict, when Rangers policed a sprawling, thinly settled country. After leaving the force he pinned on an El Paso marshal's star and spent the rest of a long life ranching the dry high country around Marfa, later setting his experiences down in a memoir still read as an Old West classic.

Walnut Springs, TX

James Buckner "Buck" Barry came to Texas from North Carolina in 1845 and spent his life on its edges — as a soldier in the Mexican War, a fighter in Indian campaigns, and, during the Civil War, commander of Confederate cavalry strung along frontier outposts from the Red River to Fort McKavett. His patrols, camped a day's ride apart, guarded scattered settlers against raids and the threat of Federal incursion from Indian Territory. He later served in the Texas Legislature and left behind personal records of those frontier-defense years.

Austin, TX

This monument honors James Hogg, who served as governor of Texas from 1891 to 1895 during the Gilded Age. He rose to office as the state wrestled with railroads and corporate power, and his tenure is remembered as a turning point in how Texas regulated the era's expanding industries. A generation after the Civil War, leaders like him steered a rapidly growing state into the modern age.

Wimberley, TX

Wimberley builder James Calvin Lane raised this modest craftsman home in 1935, next door to the café his wife Rebecca ran in the Texas Hill Country. From its living room, Rebecca operated Wimberley's first telephone switchboard, tying a small community together in the early days of rural phone service. The house is prized locally for its rare "giraffe rock" exterior, native stone studded with petrified wood and fossils.

Tyler, TX

Migrating from Alabama in 1840, James Calhoun Hill led the first permanent settlers into the future Smith County and helped run its boundaries and plat the county seat at Tyler in 1846. He prospered as a surveyor and planter in the 1850s, but by the Civil War's end in 1865 he was blind and much reduced in means. Still, in 1874 he donated land to bring a railroad into the county, and he and his wife Rebecca raised eleven children.

McKinney, TX

James Calvin Rhea came from Tennessee to Texas in 1855 and, with his brother, built the gristmill that gave the community of Rhea Mills its name. This elegant home, built around 1890, shows off Eastlake-style flourishes—a wraparound veranda, ornamental woodwork, and sunburst panels—and stayed in the Rhea family until 1956. A Civil War veteran, Rhea lies with his wife Mary in nearby Pecan Grove Cemetery.

Muldoon, TX

James Carrel Bell, born in 1820, was a young soldier in the Texas war for independence who entered Bexar in December 1835 under Captain John York. He later served in Company D of the Eighth Texas Infantry Regiment, C.S.A., during the Civil War. This state-erected marker honors him and his wife Eliza Baker Bell, tying one man's life to both the founding of Texas and its Confederate service.

Floresville, TX

When Wilson County was organized in 1860 it honored James Charles Wilson, an Englishman who left home in 1836 and remade himself as a Texan lawyer, editor, and legislator. Captured during the ill-fated 1842 Mier Expedition, he escaped a Mexican prison in 1843, then built a career spanning the press, the bench, the Texas Senate, and the delicate work of settling Spanish- and Mexican-era land claims. He closed his life near Gonzales, licensed to preach, and now rests in the State Cemetery in Austin.

Clarksville, TX

Born in Tennessee in 1789, James Clark settled in Northeast Texas and founded the town of Clarksville, which bears his name. He died there in 1838, in the early years of the Republic of Texas.

Weatherford, TX

This Queen Anne home in Weatherford dates to the late 1890s, most likely built by retired railroad man Robert Lowe as he opened a hardware business nearby, though an 1874 courthouse fire erased the earliest records and old Sanborn maps hint an earlier structure was enlarged. Its original transoms and a stained-glass panel over the front door still survive. In 1940 it passed to James Claude Wright, who built a business selling street signs to small towns and promoting national trade days, and the city bought the house in 2009 to save it from demolition.

Corsicana, TX

Born in North Carolina in 1790, James Clinton Neill joined Stephen F. Austin's colony in 1831 and threw himself into the Texas Revolution as an artillery officer, commanding the guns at the Siege of Bexar. Appointed to lead San Antonio and the Alamo, he left that post in February 1836 to tend to family illness — handing command to William B. Travis and narrowly missing the fall of the Alamo. He was wounded serving Sam Houston's army the day before San Jacinto, and later helped found the seat of Navarro County.

Houston, TX

James Collinsworth (1806–1838), Tennessee-born, packed an extraordinary public career into a few short years of the Texas Republic. A delegate to the 1835 Consultation and a signer of the Texas Declaration of Independence, he "bore himself as a chief" at San Jacinto, then served as Secretary of State, senator, and the first Chief Justice of the Texas Supreme Court. After he drowned at Galveston in 1838, his remains were carried up Buffalo Bayou for the first Masonic funeral held in Texas.

Gonzales, TX

Born December 7, 1811, James D. Owens volunteered in the Texas army during the war for independence and served in the San Jacinto campaign that secured the Republic of Texas. He died August 14, 1843, and this Star-and-Wreath grave marker was erected in his honor by the State of Texas in 1962. Such markers commemorate the ordinary volunteer soldiers who filled the ranks of Sam Houston's revolutionary army.

Corpus Christi, TX

English-born and Boston-raised, James Downing enlisted in the Massachusetts heavy artillery in 1862, survived combat at Petersburg, and escaped while being taken to the notorious Andersonville prison, making his way back to rejoin his regiment. After the war he was commissioned an officer in the 36th U.S. Colored Troops and posted to Corpus Christi, where he married into the local von Blücher family and built a long civic career—brickyard owner, voter registrar, fire chief, alderman, and city marshal. He died in Corpus Christi in 1891.

Fort Worth, TX

When Fort Worth organized its public schools in 1882, Black children were first taught in churches before the city built segregated schoolhouses. James Elvis Guinn, the son of formerly enslaved parents who prized the education they never had, rose to become a chemistry professor at Prairie View before returning home to lead the South Side Colored School. The grand three-story brick school begun in 1917 was named in his honor days after his death, and it grew into the largest Black school in the city.

Crockett, TX

Born in 1845 to Houston County pioneers, James Elbert Downes came of age in time to serve in the Civil War and remained active in the local Confederate veterans association for the rest of his life. A prominent business and civic leader devoted to the Methodist Church, he built a family home on 7th Street that still stands as a local landmark.

Corsicana, TX

Born in Tennessee in 1851, James Emerson Whiteselle came to Texas in 1870 to work in his uncle's lumber business and by 1875 had joined the Corsicana lumber company he would eventually own, later expanding into brick manufacturing. A prominent businessman and banker, he served as mayor of Corsicana from 1894 to 1898 — the very years oil was discovered there — and helped guide the field's early development. He died on his birthday in 1915.

Houston County, TX

A Tennessean who settled in East Texas in the 1820s, James English fought in the 1835 siege of Bexar and served as a militia commissioner during the Texas Revolution. For that service the Republic granted him land in Houston County, where he and his wife Mary Lucinda settled around 1842. Part of that property became this family cemetery.

Webberville, TX

An Arkansas native, James Euwin Edmiston came to Texas with his family in 1835 and settled near present-day Webberville just as the fight for independence began. He served as a Texas Ranger during the revolution, took part in frontier battles, and was caught up in the Woll Expedition and the Archive War of 1842. He later rode with Travis County ranger companies before joining the rush to California in 1849, and earned a Republic of Texas pension for his service.

Cuero, TX

James F. Blair's life traced the arc of frontier Texas through its wars and lawlessness. Born in Tennessee, he fought in the Mexican War and then rose from the Confederate ranks to captain a company of the 36th Texas Cavalry, before turning to keeping the peace as a Texas Ranger and, in 1866, as the governor-appointed sheriff of DeWitt County. That county would soon become notorious for the Sutton-Taylor feud, and Blair belonged to the generation of veterans-turned-lawmen who tried to hold order on a violent frontier.

Hallsville, TX

Chartered in 1856 in the town of Ash Springs, this Masonic lodge honored James F. Taylor, a leading citizen, state legislator, and Mason. When the railroad bypassed Ash Springs in the late 1860s, the lodge relocated to the new town of Hallsville and built a two-story hall, housing a school on the first floor and the lodge room above. The Masons ran the town's only school until 1915, making the lodge a cornerstone of local civic and educational life.

Bailey, TX

James Fowler Biggers was part of the great postwar migration that reshaped Texas: born in South Carolina and raised in Mississippi, he brought his family west by wagon train in 1869 to settle the black-land prairies of Fannin County. Like many frontier settlers of the Reconstruction era, he wove together the institutions a new community needed — a Primitive Baptist congregation he helped found and served as lay preacher, a school housed in that same church, and a community cemetery. His life traces how faith, education, and settlement advanced hand in hand on the North Texas frontier.

Robert Lee, TX

Born in Kentucky in 1844, James Franklin Byrd came west and enlisted in the Confederate cavalry at Gonzales in 1862, riding through hard-fought engagements at Holly Springs, Harrisburg, and Fort Pillow. Captured and held as a prisoner of war on Mississippi's Ship Island, he talked his way free by volunteering to load a boat and slipping in among prisoners bound for exchange. He came home to Texas, married, and settled for good near Hayrick Mountain in the Coke County ranch country.