Historic Markers in Texas

Jones Creek, TX

A Pennsylvania-born merchant who made his fortune in Missouri's frontier trade, James Franklin Perry married Emily Austin and, urged on by her brother Stephen F. Austin, moved his family to Texas in 1831. He built mercantile and farming interests and settled at Peach Point Plantation on the Brazos River. As an active supporter of the Republic of Texas and executor of Stephen F. Austin's estate, his careful stewardship of Austin's maps, land papers, and reports preserved records now central to the Texas archives.

Hemphill, TX

James Frederick Gomer and his wife Ana came to Sabine County from Giles County, Tennessee, in 1836, receiving acreage in 1838 and building up a large farm. By the early 1870s both had died and were buried on the family land alongside a child who died young. Because the farm sat along a well-traveled route, tradition holds that others — including Native people and enslaved individuals — were buried just outside the family plot.

Honey Grove, TX

James G. Gilmer moved from Kentucky in 1845 with his wife Elizabeth and their children, part of the wave of Anglo-American settlers pushing into North Texas; his son James P. is said to have been the first such child born at present-day Honey Grove. Gilmer died only months after settling, and his burial founded the local cemetery, while the town later rose on the land grant he left to his wife.

Austin, TX

Kentucky-born James G. Wilkinson served in Capt. William W. Hill's company at the Battle of San Jacinto, the 1836 clash that won Texas its independence. He died in Lee County in 1848, and his wife Amanda lies beside him. The State of Texas marked the grave in 1936 during the centennial of the revolution.

Wells, TX

James H. Bowman served in the army of the Republic of Texas during the 1836 fight for independence from Mexico, part of the volunteer force that secured the breakaway republic. Born in 1820, he lived out his life in the East Texas piney woods, dying in 1886. His grave marker anchors the memory of one of the revolution's many rank-and-file soldiers.

Belton, TX

Tennessee-born James H. Isbell fought at the Battle of San Jacinto, the 1836 clash that won Texas its independence from Mexico. He died in 1858 at age forty-four; his wife Amanda outlived him by more than two decades. Their marker records the resting place of a veteran of the revolution that created the Republic of Texas.

El Paso, TX

Born in Virginia in 1847, James Harrison White served with the Confederacy before coming to El Paso around 1869, then spent the following decades in an extraordinary run of frontier service — in the Mexican and U.S. armies and as a U.S. Marshal at Las Cruces. As sheriff, tax collector, police chief, and railway official, he helped steer El Paso through its transformation from a rough border settlement into a modern city before his death in 1907. His life traced the closing of one frontier era and the rise of the Southwestern metropolis that followed.

Marshall, TX

Connecticut-born physician James Harper Starr came to Texas in 1837 and served the Republic as Secretary of the Treasury and army surgeon. During the Civil War he took on the daunting job of Postmaster General for the Confederacy's western states after federal control of the Mississippi split the South in two—improvising mail routes by pony express, wagon, blockade-runner, and courier to keep soldiers and families connected across enemy lines. After the war he examined East Texas oil showings and founded Marshall's first bank.

Abilene, TX

James Harrison Parramore came west after the Civil War with a Confederate record behind him and cattle on his mind. From a hundred rented acres near Gonzales he built, with his brother-in-law Hugh Lewis and partner C. W. Merchant, the San Simon Cattle and Canal Company — stocking vast Arizona and New Mexico ranges with Texas longhorns for two decades. Settling his large family in Abilene in 1881, he became a fixture of the cattle business and a benefactor of Simmons College, and the grand French Second Empire home he built survived until 1960.

Combes, TX

Orphaned at six when his father died in the Civil War, James Henry Dishman grew up fast in East Texas and turned himself into a successful cattleman. In 1893 he gambled on remote, undeveloped school land in northern Cameron County, building a working ranch and earning a reputation for hard work and open-handed generosity — even surviving a near-fatal shooting by a rustler. His land gifts for a railroad right-of-way, a church, a cemetery, and a school literally created the town of Combes around him.

Gonzales, TX

James Hodges, Sr. arrived at Gonzales in April 1835 and quickly bought four leagues of land at the forks of the San Marcos and Guadalupe Rivers, paying three thousand dollars in silver. That autumn the townspeople elected him a delegate to the Consultation of 1835, the convention that created a provisional government and placed Sam Houston over a new Texas army. He supplied the army in 1836, fled with his family during the Runaway Scrape, and later returned to serve on the county's land commission and raise his family on the rivers.

Granbury, TX

James Hogan Doyle, born in South Carolina in 1846, served the Confederacy in the Civil War before making his way to Texas around 1870. Settling in Granbury, he became a prominent merchant, banker, and civic leader who served several terms as Hood County treasurer. He and his wife, Mary Kate Stringfellow, built their home on this site about 1880 and raised three children there; the property stayed in the family until 1939.

Burton, TX

James Holt came to Texas around 1836, in the very first years of the Republic, and in 1838 received a substantial 1,280-acre grant along Mill Creek. Like many frontier settlers he wore several hats, serving as a Texas Ranger and later as postmaster of Vine Grove. When he died his widow Mary stepped into the postmaster's role — a common frontier arrangement that quietly kept mail and community running.

Boerne, TX

This two-story limestone house was built around 1880 by Ives Brown for the Kingsbury family and, in 1925, was bought by Maria James — the pioneer surveyor and community leader who had platted the town of Boerne back in 1852. She named the home "Puccoon" for her ancestral place in Hanover County, Virginia, and it stayed in her family after her death in 1940. Her career surveying and laying out a town was a striking achievement for a woman of her era.

La Grange, TX

James Jeffres Ross came to Stephen F. Austin's colony as one of the "Old Three Hundred," the first legally settled Anglo-American families in Mexican Texas. A militia captain, convention delegate, and successful trader, he helped win Austin's release from a Mexican prison and left his name on Ross Prairie and Ross Creek. In 1835 he was killed by neighbors enraged that he had sheltered Indians in his home.

Lampasas, TX

Illinois-born James Jackson Beeman came to Texas in 1840 and became one of the first settlers of Dallas and Weatherford. He helped cut the first road through the Trinity bottoms, took part in platting the future city of Dallas in 1842, and guided President Sam Houston to an Indian council in 1843. His restless frontier life carried him to the California Gold Rush and into the 1860 recovery of the long-captive Cynthia Ann Parker before he returned to Dallas.

Conroe, TX

Born in Ireland around 1790, James Jordan came to Texas in 1826 as part of José Vehlein's colony and built this cabin about 1830 on land granted by the Mexican government. Its hand-hewn pine logs were joined with half-dovetail notching and its chimney fashioned of mud and sticks; the Tharp family moved and restored the house in 1976.

Houston, TX

Built in 1912 and remodeled in 1924 by noted architect Birdsall P. Briscoe, this classical revival house was home to businessman and ornithologist James Judson Carroll and his wife Lena, from a prominent lumber family. Its colossal two-story columns, fine balustrade, and interior carvings by artist Peter Mansbendel reflect the confident wealth of early-twentieth-century Houston. The residence remains a showcase of period craftsmanship.

Dallas, TX

Trained as a lawyer in Tennessee, J. K. P. Record became Dallas's district attorney in 1860 before leaving office to serve in the Confederate Army. Returning after the Civil War, he won election as a state senator and sat as a delegate to the Texas Constitutional Convention of 1866, one of the fraught gatherings that tried to reshape the defeated South. He later practiced law in Dallas and was active in the Masons and Odd Fellows.

Kerrville, TX

James Kerr, a Kentucky-born veteran of the War of 1812 and former Missouri legislator, came to Texas in 1825 as surveyor general of Green DeWitt's colony and a member of Stephen F. Austin's "Old Three Hundred." He selected the site of Gonzales and named it for the governor of Coahuila, endured the deaths of his first wife and children, and spent decades as a surveyor, Texas Ranger major, and delegate to the conventions that steered Texas toward independence. In 1856 pioneer Joshua Brown gave land here so that Kerr County would bear his old friend's name.

Houston, TX

James L. Autry came to Corsicana in 1876 and studied law just as Texas's first oil discoveries were transforming the state's economy. As chief counsel for the Texas Company—later Texaco—he helped invent the new field of petroleum law. In 1912 he commissioned the noted firm Sanguinet and Staats to build this Neoclassical home, distinguished by its double galleries, fluted Doric columns, and tile roof.

Corsicana, TX

James L. Collins entered the oil business at fourteen in West Virginia and followed Texas's new discoveries to Corsicana around 1923, forming the Wheelock & Collins Oil Co. He became a force in developing the Corsicana and East Texas fields and rose to leadership in national petroleum associations. A lifelong bachelor, he left his $13 million estate to charities, a Catholic school built at this site, and scholarships for Corsicana graduates.

Austin, TX

As a boy in the 1920s, James L. Farmer, Jr. lived here while his father taught at Samuel Huston College. In 1942 he founded the Congress of Racial Equality, which trained activists in Gandhian nonviolent protest, and in 1961 he led the Freedom Riders who braved violence to desegregate interstate travel across the Deep South. Farmer later served in the federal government and received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1998.

Marshall, TX

Born in Marshall, where his father taught at Wiley College, James Leonard Farmer, Jr., entered college at fourteen and honed his ideas on Melvin Tolson's famed debate team before studying nonviolence under Howard Thurman at Howard University. In 1942 he co-founded the Congress of Racial Equality, organized early restaurant sit-ins, led the 1961 Freedom Rides into the Deep South, and helped drive passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act; President Clinton awarded him the Medal of Freedom in 1998.

Hillsboro, TX

James Lindell Harris was born on a farm near Hillsboro in 1916 and entered the Army in 1941, training at Fort Sam Houston before joining the 756th Tank Battalion. He led his men through North Africa and Europe, and at Vagney, France, though mortally wounded, kept directing his unit and refused aid until a wounded crewman was carried to safety. For that courage he received the Medal of Honor posthumously.

San Marcos, TX

Built in 1891–92 for James and Eliza Malone, parents of sixteen children, this Victorian Queen Anne home anchored the Stringtown settlement east of San Marcos, where the Malones were among the earliest pioneer families. A 1926 remodel gave it a Classical Revival face, and a 1996 renovation restored its exuberant original details — the two-story porch, chamfered columns, jigsawn brackets, and turned balusters.

Marshall, TX

James Leonard Farmer, Sr. earned a doctorate from Boston University in 1918 and became a Methodist minister and scholar of philosophy and religion, teaching at Wiley College and other historically Black institutions across the South. A popular speaker and author, he pastored churches in Marshall, Texarkana, and Galveston. His son, James Farmer, Jr., grew up to found the Congress of Racial Equality and lead the civil rights movement.

Beeville, TX

Son of Mount Rushmore sculptor Gutzon Borglum, Lincoln Borglum assisted on the great carving and, after his father's death, oversaw its completion and served as the memorial's superintendent until 1944. He later settled in Beeville, where he became a beloved civic leader, sculptor, and cattle breeder until his death in 1986 — his lungs damaged by granite dust from the Rushmore blasting.

Austin, TX

James Loraine Dallas left Pennsylvania to join the fight for Texas independence, serving in the Army of Texas in 1836 during the revolution that created the Republic. He settled in Washington County, part of the wave of newcomers who staked their futures on the new nation. His grave marker preserves the memory of one of the many soldier-settlers of that founding generation.

San Saba, TX

Jim and Ellen Baker married in 1859 into families that had come to Texas during the Republic era, and Jim built one of the region's early cattle fortunes—driving 6,000 head into newly formed San Saba County in 1856. Their family survived a Comanche attack in 1861 that left Jim wounded, and after the Civil War he and his brother ran vast herds along the Goodnight-Loving Trail into Colorado and out to the Quitaque country of the Panhandle. In 1880 the brothers sold their 140,000-acre Quitaque Ranch and 20,000 cattle to Charles Goodnight, then returned to ranch quietly in their beloved San Saba.

Galveston, TX

A veteran of the War of 1812, lawyer James Love came to Texas in 1837 and helped found the city of Galveston, becoming a political ally of Mirabeau B. Lamar. He served as a delegate to the 1845 convention that approved annexation to the United States and held several judicial posts. Though in his sixties, he enlisted in Terry's Texas Rangers during the Civil War and later became the first judge of the Harris and Galveston County Criminal Court.

Salado, TX

A Baylor-educated Confederate veteran, James Lowry Smith took up the professorship and principalship of Salado College in 1863 and became a driving force for rigorous education in central Texas. Despite Civil War-era enrollment losses and the financial panic of 1873, he held the college to high standards through two terms of leadership, the second ending in 1880 as the school closed. His grave monument remembers him as an epitome of virtue, honor, and truth.

Benbrook, TX

In 1876 James M. Benbrook, an Indiana native and Union Army veteran of the Civil War, brought his family to a Tarrant County settlement then called Marinda. He became a prominent farmer and landowner, and when the Texas and Pacific Railroad completed its lines and built a depot here in 1880, the company renamed the community in his honor. The town of Benbrook still carries his name.

Bryson, TX

Tennessee-born James Madison McCloud fought with an Alabama cavalry unit in the Civil War before bringing his family to Texas in 1881 and settling near Bryson. There he founded a church at Cottonwood Springs and began a remarkable fifty-three-year career as a Methodist circuit rider across northern Texas and southern Oklahoma. A farmer as well as a preacher, he ministered to scattered frontier congregations until his death in 1934.

Dallas, TX

Kentucky-born James Martin Patterson reached Dallas in 1846 and, with partner John W. Smith, pooled $700 to open one of the town's first stores. Ever the venturer, in 1851 the pair built a flatboat and tried to float cotton down the Trinity River toward the Gulf — a bold bid to give landlocked North Texas a route to market. Patterson went on to serve as county judge from 1854 to 1866 and managed extensive landholdings until his death at ninety-four.

Milford, TX

James McDaniel, born in Alabama in 1810, was among the men who served in the Texas army during the revolutionary year of 1836, when settlers won independence from Mexico. He and his wife Idabella lived out long lives on the Texas frontier, dying in the 1880s and 1890s. Their marker preserves the memory of an ordinary soldier-settler of the founding generation.

San Patricio, TX

This home is remembered as the residence of James McGloin, the County Sligo–born empresario who, with John McMullen, brought Irish colonists to South Texas and laid out the town of San Patricio in the 1830s. Recognized as a Recorded Texas Historic Landmark, the house stands where one of the region's founding settlers made his home. It anchors the memory of the Irish colony that took root in Mexican-era Texas.

Gainesville, TX

A Tennessee-trained lawyer, James Menees Lindsay arrived in Gainesville on his twenty-second birthday in 1857 and spent the next six decades shaping the young North Texas town. He served as a state legislator, sat on Gainesville's first city council, was a delegate to the 1866 Constitutional Convention, and presided as a district judge. One of the area's largest landowners, he helped bring the railroad to town and donated land for churches and schools, leaving a mark as one of Gainesville's foremost civic builders.

Galveston, TX

Newspaperman Nat Davis built this galleried two-story home in 1899, designed by Galveston architect Charles W. Bulger. As a reporter for the Galveston Daily News, Davis wrote some of the first accounts of the catastrophic 1900 hurricane; he drowned two years later, after which his widow rented rooms to boarders — among them Frank Chauncy Patten, the first librarian of the city's Rosenberg Library.

San Antonio, TX

This marker honors a Vermont-born soldier who served in the army of the Republic of Texas from 1836 to 1837, the perilous first years of Texas independence. Like many volunteers who came from the Northern states, he stayed on after the fighting, and he lived in Texas until his death in 1876.

Strawn, TX

J. N. Stuart and his wife Sally built this house in 1874 from materials hauled by ox-wagon all the way from East Texas, joined with wooden pegs by a shipbuilder named Andrew Murdock. It was the first home in the area to boast milled lumber and glass windows, and the Stuarts raised four sons here who all prospered in business. Long a stopping place for circuit riders, officials, and travelers, the house passed to the youngest son and remained in the family.

Denton, TX

James Newton Rayzor came to Texas from Kentucky as a boy in 1866 and became a teacher before settling in Denton, where he married Eva Tabor in 1882. A tireless civic figure, he ran the Alliance Mill and ice companies, led the chamber of commerce, and helped found both John B. Denton College and the state school that became Texas Woman's University. James and Eva completed this Prairie-style home, with its broad eaves and ribbon windows, in 1909.

Cuero, TX

They called James Norman Smith "Uncle Jimmy the Peacemaker," and his long life stitched together much of early Texas. Educated in North Carolina and a teacher in Tennessee — where one of his pupils was the future president James K. Polk — he came to Texas in 1840 and taught the first school in what became DeWitt County. He then surveyed the county, served as its first clerk, organized Presbyterian churches across the region and its first Masonic lodge, and at an 1857 rally introduced his old Tennessee friend Sam Houston to the crowd.

Coupland, TX

South Carolina–born James O. Rice reached Texas by 1835 and fought in its war for independence, then guarded the young Republic's frontier as a Texas Ranger. In an 1839 clash on the North San Gabriel River, his volunteers defeated Mexican forces under Manuel Flores and seized documents exposing the Cordova Rebellion, and he went on to join the Somervell, Mier, and Snively expeditions and serve in the Mexican War. Rewarded with land bounties, he became one of Williamson County's largest landowners, ran a store and post office at Rice's Crossing, and helped choose the county seat.

Van Alstyne, TX

James P. Dumas (1820-1875), a South Carolinian, married and moved to the Republic of Texas in 1841 and worked as a surveyor, helping map land that became part of Dallas. He fought in the Mexican War of 1846, served as Grayson County surveyor, and amassed holdings so vast he could ride the twenty miles to Sherman without leaving his own land, later helping found a Sherman bank in 1872.

Ballinger, TX

James Petty Flynt was elected sheriff of Runnels County at age 30 and served two terms, from 1908 to 1914 and again from 1920 to 1924—the last man to hold the combined office of sheriff and tax collector there. His long law-enforcement career included Texas Ranger service during both World Wars, and he later worked for the state game department from 1924 to 1940. He also helped organize the Runnels County Fair Association in 1911.

San Augustine, TX

A North Carolina lawyer who arrived in Texas in 1836 leading a company of volunteers, James Pinckney Henderson swiftly became one of the young Republic's leading statesmen, serving as attorney general, secretary of state, and diplomat to Europe. When Texas joined the Union, voters chose him as the state's first governor in 1846. He then led Texas troops as a major general in the Mexican War, earning a formal vote of thanks and a sword from Congress, before a late turn as U.S. senator.

Johnson City, TX

Georgia-born and raised in DeWitt County, James Polk Johnson served in the Confederate army before joining his uncles in the Blanco County cattle business, which he bought and made his own by 1871. In 1879 he founded a new town on the Pedernales River — Johnson City — and worked to develop it, though his ambition to make it the county seat was not realized until 1891, six years after his death.

Johnson City, TX

Built by town founder James Polk Johnson, this versatile structure served Johnson City as a community hall, opera house, and meeting place for churches and civic groups, while also housing banks, stores, hotels, and offices. When the Blanco County seat moved to Johnson City in 1890, the building briefly served as courthouse and jail. Years later, former president Lyndon Johnson kept an office here for a time.

Houston, TX

English-trained railroad car builder James Robert Cade emigrated to the United States and reached Harrisburg, Texas, in 1873, hiring on with a small railroad that Southern Pacific later absorbed. Rising to Master Car Builder for SP's Atlantic System, he oversaw the manufacture of high-quality private rail cars and pioneered the industry-wide shift from wooden to iron construction, with his 1892 iron rigging design adopted nationally.

Weatherford, TX

A Tennessee native and Civil War veteran, James Robertson Couts brought his family to Parker County in the mid-1860s and, with the proceeds of a cattle drive to California, opened a bank in Weatherford that endures today. An influential civic figure, he left an endowment to Weatherford College in his will and now rests beside his first wife, Martha. His life bridged the cattle-trailing frontier and the settled world of banking and philanthropy.

Old Center, TX

James Rowe came to the Mexican frontier of Texas from North Carolina and took up arms in the 1836 revolution that won Texas its independence. A prosperous tanner, he helped organize newly created Panola County in 1846, served a term in the young state's legislature, and donated the ground where this cemetery now stands. His story is a compact portrait of the settler-soldiers who turned a contested borderland into an American state.

Houston, TX

James Sherwood Lucas, a Nottingham-trained brick layer, emigrated from England and settled his family in Houston by 1873, where his craftsmanship shaped landmarks like the Houston Cotton Exchange and the Preston Street Bridge. His son Alfred apprenticed at sixteen and carried on the firm, building courthouses, breweries, armories, and City Hall, while Lucas Brick Works paved many of Houston's streets from clay dug along Buffalo Bayou.

Lampasas, TX

James S. Gillett's life traced the martial history of nineteenth-century Texas: a Kentucky-born frontier fighter who earned a major's rank in the Mexican War, sat in the early Texas Legislature, served as Adjutant General, rode again with the Texas Rangers, and finally soldiered for the Confederacy. His son James B. Gillett would carry the family name into Ranger legend. The marker gathers a career that touched nearly every armed chapter of the state's formative decades.

Galveston, TX

In Galveston's East End Historic District, where the city's leaders built their finest homes during the boom of the 1880s and 1890s, county treasurer James Stephen Waters bought a Church Street lot in 1891. His Victorian house, designed by Henry Collier Cooke, featured curved porches, an inset entrance, and a roof tower — removed in the mid-20th century and restored in 2015 from historic photos. Waters, an insurance agent and treasurer for 16 years, presided over the county through Galveston's era of greatest growth, and his family kept the house until 2014.

La Grange, TX

James Seaton Lester served as a delegate to the 1835 Consultation, the assembly that set Texas on the road to revolution, and fought at the decisive Battle of San Jacinto. He went on to serve in four congresses of the Republic of Texas. The state honored him with this marker in 1962.

Sulphur Springs, TX

James Selen Stout came of age on the raw northeastern Texas frontier and, still a teenager, rode three months in the Republic of Texas cavalry in 1836 — service that earned him a 320-acre land grant. As a scout and explorer he helped draw settlers into the region, and decades later took up arms again for the Confederacy during the Civil War. He and his wife Elvira raised eleven children on land his family helped open.

Lexington, TX

Born in 1808, James Shaw fought in the Texas War for Independence and stood among the soldiers at the decisive Battle of San Jacinto. He went on to serve as a representative or senator across five congresses of the Republic of Texas, helping govern the young nation before it joined the United States. He is buried here beside his wife, Nancy Ann Shaw.

Quitman, TX

James Stephen Hogg rose from a Civil War-era orphan who worked as a farmhand and printer's devil to become, in 1891, the first native-born Texan elected governor. His public climb began in Wood County, where he served as justice of the peace and county attorney before rising to district attorney and state attorney general. As governor he championed ordinary Texans against what he saw as Wall Street excess, most famously creating the Texas Railroad Commission, a regulatory model studied around the world.

Rusk, TX

James Stephen Hogg was born on a Cherokee County plantation in 1851 and rose through Wood County offices to become Texas Attorney General in 1887. Returning to his native Rusk in April 1890, he launched his gubernatorial campaign before a crowd of some 3,000 at Live Oak Park, speaking for nearly three hours. The platform he laid out that day — creating the Texas Railroad Commission and passing the Alien Land Law — became the signature achievement of his time as the state's first native-born governor.