Historic Markers in Texas

Waxahachie, TX

In the 1910s, small Texas towns competed to lure major-league clubs south for spring training, and Waxahachie built a field—nicknamed Jungle Park—that drew the Detroit Tigers, White Sox, Reds, and other pro teams. Flood damage, a rebuilt grandstand, and years of neglect nearly ended it before native son and big-league manager Paul Richards revived the park, which reopened with lights in 1946. Long shared with the local high school, the ground has hosted community baseball for over a century.

Hallettsville, TX

Paul Scarborough came to Texas in 1835 as the revolution was stirring and served in the Texas Army from that October into December. As a member of Company D, First Regiment Texas Volunteers, he fought at San Jacinto in 1836, the decisive battle that won Texas its independence. The State of Texas erected this marker to his memory in 1962.

La Marque, TX

Founded around 1895 by Laura Stewart and Julia Parr Munson, this La Marque congregation served an interdenominational community led over the years by Methodist, Presbyterian, and other Protestant clergy. Its first building was destroyed in the catastrophic 1900 Galveston storm, and the site became a cemetery for many of the storm's victims. Rebuilt and later renamed Paul's Union Church in 1933 in honor of photographer Paul Naschke, it remained a center of community life and relief work.

Athens, TX

Shaded by pines and oaks, Payne Cemetery holds the pioneers who came to Henderson County in the 1870s seeking better lives. Among them was William K. Payne, a delegate who signed the 1861 Texas Ordinance of Secession, served in the Civil War, and gave his name to nearby Payne Springs. The first burial, in 1874, was a small child of the Cook family, and generations of the area's founding families lie here alongside veterans from the Civil War through Vietnam.

Eustace, TX

For more than a century this church and cemetery have anchored the community of Payne Springs, first known as Mallard Prairie, where a sizable congregation was meeting in a log structure by 1880. The church doubled as a polling place and rally ground, and summer revivals under a brush arbor were as much social gatherings as religious ones. Local tradition holds the cemetery began with a child buried by a cedar tree; it now holds over 1,000 graves, tended through an annual July 4th workday turned fundraiser.

Geneva, TX

John and Margaret Payne came to Texas from Georgia about 1835, and John—a War of 1812 veteran—served Sabine County as a justice of the peace and state legislator. He set aside land for this family cemetery, where his son Epperson Duke Payne, a veteran of the Siege of Bexar and the Battle of San Jacinto, is also buried. Later interments include Civil War veteran Lewis Williams and his kin.

Huntsville, TX

Built in 1902, this was the first building on its campus devoted entirely to being a library, blending classical and Romanesque revival styling. It rose with help from the Peabody Education Fund, the pioneering philanthropy that Northern banker George Peabody created after the Civil War to support Southern schooling. It served as a library until 1929 and has filled other academic roles ever since.

Hillsboro, TX

In 1885 Hillsboro issued a bond to build a school for African American children in the Black neighborhood known as Freetown, naming it for George Peabody, whose fund famously aided Southern education after the Civil War. A brick building replaced the original frame structure in 1919, and the school moved to this site in 1950. Its last class graduated in 1966 as full integration approached; though the building burned in 2005, Peabody School remains a point of community pride.

Jasper, TX

As the river port of Bevilport faded with the decline of commerce on the Angelina River, some of its residents resettled at Peachtree, where Baptists worshiped alongside Methodists before formally organizing their own congregation in 1910. For decades they held services only twice a month, sharing preachers across a rural circuit, until they built their own sanctuary and called a full-time pastor in 1951. Steady growth after World War II brought new facilities and programs.

Peacock, TX

Like many West Texas towns, Peacock grew up with the coming of the Stamford & Northwestern Railway. Once called Alluvia, it was renamed in 1910 for the three Peacock brothers who moved their mercantile store in from nearby Oriana, and G.A. Gray sold 100 acres for the townsite. Within a few years it boasted groceries, drugstores, a bank, hotel, school, and more — until a catastrophic 1914 tornado leveled nearly every building. Residents rebuilt within a decade, and though the Depression and urban migration thinned its numbers, the community endured, holding homecomings that continue today.

Houston, TX

In 1949, a decade before Motown, Houston nightclub owner Don D. Robey founded Peacock Records out of frustration with how major labels marketed Black musicians under the dismissive "race music" banner. From his converted Bronze Peacock club he built a recording empire, adding Duke and Back Beat records and signing artists such as Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown, "Big Mama" Thornton and Johnny Ace before the labels were sold to ABC Dunhill in 1973.

Wimberley, TX

This 1.7-acre cemetery, with its 23 known graves, is nearly all that remains of an early Hays County community. Settlement began with North Carolina native John Bennett Peal, who with his wife Mary bought 1,920 acres in 1872 and helped found Pleasant Valley Baptist Church in 1875; the church also housed the Valley Ford School. Children from the Burchett, Edwards, George, and other pioneer families made the schoolhouse the center of Blanco Valley life, and several of those family names rest in the cemetery today.

Abernathy, TX

When a 1.5-by-15-mile 'Strip' of land opened to homesteaders in the 1890s, settlers like William Houston Pearce built a schoolhouse that doubled as a place of worship, birthing Pearce Chapel Methodist Church. A cemetery followed in 1898, and a small post office, union church, and community grew up around it before nearby Abernathy drew the settlement away. The chapel and school were eventually moved, but the cemetery endures with veterans of the Civil War through World War II among its graves.

Pearl, TX

Organized in 1884 under pioneer missionary the Rev. E. Berry, this congregation began four miles west as the Bee House Missionary Baptist Church, worshiping in a Masonic hall that also served as the community schoolhouse. When it relocated in 1889 to land sold by rancher Charles T. Karnes, it took the name Mt. Olive, and the settlement once called Wayback was later renamed Pearl. A tabernacle built about 1908 on the line between the Baptist and Methodist properties long hosted revivals and summer brush-arbor meetings.

Pearl, TX

In the rolling country of Coryell County, the community first called Wayback—a clerical mangling of "Swayback"—took the softer name Pearl in 1890 for a postmaster's young cousin. Its cemetery grew out of grief and generosity when the Keeton family set aside land after burying fourteen-year-old Lillian in 1896, later deeding acreage for public graves. The ground holds pioneers, victims of the 1918 influenza epidemic including a doctor who died treating the sick, and veterans of every American war from the Civil War through Vietnam.

Pearl, TX

Worship in this corner of Coryell County began in the Bee House community around 1878 and moved to the first Pearl schoolhouse on Cowhouse Creek before the Church of Christ was organized in 1895. Members bought land, raised a sanctuary, and in 1904 built a tabernacle for the marathon summer revivals — days-long meetings running from sunrise to late evening — that it still hosts. More than a century on, the church continues to serve its rural membership.

Corpus Christi, TX

This memorial was placed by a chapter of the Pearl Harbor Survivors Association to keep alive the memory of December 7, 1941, the morning Japanese forces struck the U.S. Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor. President Franklin Roosevelt called it 'a date which will live in infamy,' and the attack pulled the United States into World War II the next day. The survivors who founded these chapters made it their mission to remember fallen comrades and, in their motto, to 'Keep America Alert.'

Pearl, TX

A handful of Methodists first gathered in a preacher's home in the winter of 1875–76 and worshiped in the Hope schoolhouse before a landowner donated three acres for a church in 1890. For a century Pearl Methodist Church anchored a scattered rural community, its congregation rising and falling as neighbors moved on to found new churches, until it disbanded in 1979 and left its property to the local cemetery association.

Pearl, TX

The Pearl School grew from a log cabin with a puncheon floor and split-log benches into a modern campus with a gymnasium over its 1884–1958 life. Beginning as a one- or two-teacher school under trustees J.H. Harrison, V.C. Karnes, and Frank Roberts, it expanded steadily — to three teachers in 1907, four by 1917, and a seven-teacher high school in 1934. After consolidating with the Evant district in 1958, the building found new life as the Pearl Community Center, still visited by former students.

Pearland, TX

Pearland began with a railroad siding called 'Mark Belt,' laid by the Gulf, Colorado & Santa Fe in 1883. A decade later William Zychlinski platted a townsite here, and developer S.M. Christensen planted pear and fruit trees to lure settlers—giving the town its name. A 1900 depot became the community's hub for mail, supplies, and shipping cotton, hay, and produce, and though the great 1900 storm slowed things, promotion of the area as an agricultural paradise fueled its growth before the depot finally closed in 1972.

Pearsall, TX

Pearsall's Presbyterians organized in 1884 in the home of Mrs. Mary Dorsey, electing elders and trustees and calling the Rev. W. S. Wright as their first pastor. Their church, dedicated in 1885, is the oldest church building in continuous use in Pearsall and still holds its original pulpit, communion table, and pews. In 1970 the congregation became ecumenical.

Austin, TX

This green stretch along Shoal Creek began as part of the early plantation holdings of Elisha Marshall Pease, a Texas governor of the 1850s. In the years after the Civil War it served as a camping ground for federal troops during the military occupation of Texas, and in 1875 Governor Pease and his wife gave the acreage to the city as a public park. Long a favored spot for firemen's outings and community celebrations, it remained largely undeveloped for decades and still keeps its natural beauty.

Margaret, TX

On this ground in December 1860, Texas Rangers under Captain L. S. Ross overtook a Comanche encampment and recaptured Cynthia Ann Parker, who had been taken as a child during a raid in 1836 and raised among the Comanche for twenty-four years. Torn from the family she had made—including her son, the future chief Quanah Parker—her recapture became one of the most famous and tragic episodes of the Texas frontier. The state marked the battlefield in 1936.

Crowell, TX

At the Battle of Pease River in 1860, Texas Rangers under Captain L. S. Ross attacked a Comanche encampment and took a woman they recognized as Cynthia Ann Parker, seized as a nine-year-old in the 1836 raid on Fort Parker. By then she had lived a quarter-century among the Comanche as Naduah, wife of Chief Peta Nocona and mother of the future leader Quanah Parker. Returned to her Anglo relatives with her infant daughter, she never adjusted, tried repeatedly to escape, and died in 1864.

Austin, TX

This Austin schoolhouse rose in 1876 on a block the Republic of Texas had set aside for education back in 1839, making it one of the oldest public-funded school buildings in the state. It honors Governor Elisha M. Pease, whose mid-century legislation helped lay the financial groundwork for Texas public schools. Rebuilt after an 1892 fire and repeatedly enlarged, its walls saw generations of children through their first lessons.

Austin, TX

Dedicated in 1876 on ground the Republic of Texas had set aside for education back in 1839, the Austin Graded School House was one of the first Texas schools built entirely with public funds. The three-story limestone building held twelve rooms and served 200 students until an 1896 fire; rebuilt around its original walls, it was renamed in 1902 for former Governor Elisha M. Pease. Later additions by architects Dennis R. Walsh and Hugo Kuehne expanded the simplified classical building still in use.

Peaster, TX

The village of Peaster grew from land South Carolinian Henry H. Peaster bought in 1870 and the town lots he began selling in the late 1880s. He donated two acres for this still-active cemetery in 1893, and among its early settlers and war veterans rests John Alexander Fox, the artist who created the "Buster Brown" character for a famous shoe-advertising campaign.

Longview, TX

This East Texas congregation traces its roots to a Disciples of Christ church gathered near Camden in 1852, in the antebellum decades when scattered rural families built faith communities of their own. When that early church dissolved in the 1870s, its members regrouped, and the Peatown Christian Church took shape in 1871 with twelve charter members drawn from the settlement of Edwardsville—locally called Peatown—and nearby farms. For over fifty years they worshiped in the old building and baptized new members in a neighboring spring.

Dublin vicinity, TX

Dating to 1880, Pecan Cemetery was the main burial ground for the Purves Community, which grew up around James Purves's blacksmith shop in Erath County. Its oldest marked grave is that of infant Horace F. Adams, and a memorial stands for Civil War casualty Daniel Turney, though he is actually buried in Tyler. When nearby Friendship Baptist Church disbanded, its materials were used to build a tabernacle here where funerals and annual cemetery-working gatherings were held.

Dublin vicinity, TX

In 1884 J. W. McKenzie deeded three and a half acres in the Purves Community for a church and cemetery, though burials had begun there as early as 1880. When the Friendship Baptist Church disbanded in 1915, its lumber was reused in 1922 to build this open-air tabernacle—a well-preserved example of the group meeting shelters that hosted revivals and gatherings across rural Texas.

Gatesville, TX

Organized in 1882 as Coryell Creek Baptist Church of Christ by a handful of founding families, this congregation began with services in local schoolhouses and brush-arbor camp meetings along Coryell Creek. It built a tabernacle in 1903, took the name Pecan Grove Baptist Church in 1929, and raised a sanctuary at this site soon after. Recognized by Baylor University for supporting ministerial students, it has counted as many as six generations of some families among its members.

McKinney, TX

This ground began as a Republic of Texas land grant in 1845, just four years after Dr. William E. Throckmorton led his family from Tennessee to found the first permanent settlement in the area. By the 1850s it held its first burials, and public ownership followed in 1870; a shady stand of trees gave the place its name. Among those honored is Dr. James Webb Throckmorton—Confederate general, Governor of Texas, and long-serving congressman.

Hooks, TX

In March 1836, as Texas declared its independence from Mexico, an unusually large share of the convention's leading delegates came from Pecan Point, a Red River settlement in this corner of far Northeast Texas. Richard Ellis presided over the gathering that produced the young republic's declaration and constitution, while neighbors like Collin McKinney, A. H. Latimer, Samuel Price Carson, and Robert Hamilton helped draft the document and staff the new government. That a single frontier vicinity supplied five prominent founders speaks to how thinly settled but politically ambitious early Anglo-Texas was.

Hamilton, TX

In the 1870s and 1880s, pioneer families settled the country along the Lampasas River near Lookout Mountain, opening a school and, in 1893, beginning burials at what became Pecan Wells Cemetery. Civil War veteran W. M. Kemp and his wife Margaret formally donated the ground in 1904, reportedly on the condition that graves always remain free. As nearby schools consolidated in 1921, the community took the name Pecan Wells, and its cemetery grew to hold more than 200 graves.

Fort Stockton, TX

Carved from Presidio County in 1871 and organized in 1875, Pecos County chose Fort Stockton as its seat and elected its first slate of officials that March. The names on that roll—Frazer, Torres, Rooney, Carrasco, Huffmann—reflect the mingled Anglo and Tejano leadership of the far West Texas frontier. Decades later, the 1926 discovery of oil in the Yates field transformed the county's fortunes.

Del Rio, TX

Where the Pecos River runs its last sixty miles through deep canyons before joining the Rio Grande, engineers have long struggled to bridge it. The Southern Pacific built the first high railroad span here in 1891, and the first highway bridge followed in 1923 — only to be swept away, like its temporary successors, by floodwaters in the 1950s. The current bridge, completed in 1957 and towering 273 feet above the water, is the highest highway bridge in Texas.

Fredericksburg, TX

German immigrant farmers established the Pedernales community in the 1840s, and by 1854 it joined a neighbor to form a school district in the Hill Country. A native-stone schoolhouse built before 1875 hosted a one-teacher, seven-grade school, where final-exam days, plays, and Christmas programs became beloved traditions. Falling enrollment during World War II closed the school in 1945, and the building later became a home.

Dallas, TX

Pediatric orthopedic care in Dallas grew from a 1921 effort by Masons who recruited the city's first orthopedic surgeon, Dr. William B. Carrell, to treat children—especially young polio patients—at the Hella Temple Free Clinic. The Scottish Rite Masons bought the growing hospital in 1926, and over the decades it pioneered work in dyslexia, scoliosis, clubfoot, limb reconstruction, and hand disorders. Renamed Texas Scottish Rite Hospital for Children, it still treats children free of charge, supported entirely by donations.

Woodville, TX

Abram and Julia Pedigo came to Texas in 1857 and, with their eleven children, established a plantation near this site in the 1880s, running a grist mill, cotton gin, and sugar mill alongside their farming. The family cemetery began in sorrow in 1883, when their daughter Cordelia and one of her newborn twins died and were brought home for burial. Nearly all the Pedigo children came to rest here, and a native-rock chapel raised by the family was dedicated to these pioneers in 1938.

Menard, TX

This hourglass-shaped pass where McDougal Creek meets the San Saba River was a favored Native American campground long before it entered written history in 1732 as the site of a Spanish-Apache battle. Over the following generations it saw mustang hunters, Indian fighters, German settlers, and gold-seekers pass through, and it became a stagecoach station named—so the story goes—for a one-legged land commissioner. Its nearby 'Robbers' Roost' gained notoriety for hold-ups, and the crossing later served the Great Western Cattle Trail.

Victoria, TX

Erected in 1884, the Pela House blends a conservatively Greek Revival frame—balanced bays, a center passage, pedimented windows, and columns—with fashionable Victorian touches like geometric railings on its two-tiered porch. It was the home of Silvain Pela, a French immigrant, and his Swiss-born wife Elizabeth Meyer Pela, who raised ten children within its walls. The Pela family and their descendants held the house for more than a century. It was recorded as a Texas Historic Landmark in 1998.

Frost, TX

Pelham Cemetery has served an African American community founded in the years after the Civil War by freedpeople who had recently gained their liberty. Originally called Fork of the Creeks for the three streams that met nearby, the farming settlement buried its earliest known resident, Isaac Franklin, in 1880. Families like the Caruthers, Porters, and Stanfords rest here, and a community association has cared for the grounds since the late 1930s.

Frost, TX

Founded by Black families after 1866 and first called Forks of the Creek, Pelham was one of the freedmen's communities that took root in Texas after emancipation. Its residents organized churches — Wesley Methodist, Brown's Chapel A.M.E., and Union Baptist — the first of which also housed the community's school. Renamed Pelham when it won a post office in 1898, the town peaked at 350 people in 1926; though its stores, gin, and schools are gone, its heritage endures.

Bowie, TX

In the years after the Civil War, Confederate veterans around the young town of Bowie gathered on land bought by Captain John J. Carter to reunite, mourn, and remember. In 1901 the Bowie Pelham Camp of United Confederate Veterans purchased acreage that was to be forever dedicated to veterans past, present, and future, building a pavilion, wells, and a dining shed. As the old soldiers died off, the camp deeded the grounds to the city in 1923, and Pelham Park grew into a community gathering place for celebrations, trading days, and rodeos.

Center Point, TX

The Penateka, or "honey eaters," were the southernmost band of the Comanche, ranging across the Edwards Plateau and following the buffalo on which they depended for food, clothing, and shelter. Renowned horsemen, they made settlement west of this area perilous for decades. Pressure from Texas Rangers and the U.S. Army's Second Cavalry, reservation removals, and the Red River War of 1874–75 forced the Comanche onto reservation lands, where the breakup of holdings in 1901 scattered the people — who have since worked to rebuild their shared culture.

Sidney vicinity, TX

William and Emaline Pendergrass left Tennessee for Texas in 1849 and put down permanent roots in frontier Comanche County by 1873. A community builder, William helped found churches and a school, and in 1883 gave a plot of his land to bury a stranger found nearby—the first grave in what became the family cemetery. He deeded the acre to the community in 1888, and generations of descendants now rest among its more than five hundred graves.

Temple, TX

Known as Pendletonville in the 1880s, this Bell County community was renamed in 1904 for George C. Pendleton (1845–1913), a local resident who rose through Texas politics with rare speed. He served in the state House, became its Speaker, and then as Lieutenant Governor became the first elected official to preside over both legislative chambers before going on to Congress.

Prairie Lea, TX

Pendleton Rector was one of the citizen-soldiers who won Texas its independence from Mexico. He was present at the 1832 clash at Velasco, the 1835 Siege of Bexar that drove Mexican forces from San Antonio, and the decisive Battle of San Jacinto in April 1836, where Sam Houston's army secured the Republic of Texas in less than twenty minutes of fighting. The State of Texas erected this marker in 1962 to honor his service.

Greenville, TX

In 1899 E. C. DeJernett and B. A. Cordell founded both Texas Holiness University and a religious community on this site, its deeds forbidding alcohol, tobacco, and "worldly amusements" like cards and dancing. The town took the biblical name Peniel in 1902 and incorporated in 1906, while the university operated until 1920 before moving to Oklahoma. Peniel was eventually annexed by neighboring Greenville in 1957.

Penitas, TX

Peñitas—"Little Pebbles," named for local gravel—grew from the mid-18th-century colonization of José de Escandón, who in 1749 settled families on the Reynosa land grant along the Rio Grande. On the common lands north of the river, ranching communities took root, protected by the small mission of San Joaquín del Monte that ministered to Indigenous people and settlers alike. A prosperous salt trade, Spanish porciones granted in the 1760s, and later a steamboat landing and railroad stop carried the community into the modern era.

Mission vicinity, TX

By local tradition, Penitas was founded in the mid-1520s by Father Zamora and five Spaniards who broke away from the ill-fated Pánfilo de Narváez expedition, making it, some claim, among the oldest towns in the United States. The refugees are said to have built whitewashed stone houses and been befriended by Native people, exchanging the Catholic faith, weaving, and farming methods for lessons in local cookery. Whether legend or fact, the story links this Rio Grande settlement to the earliest chapters of Spanish contact in the New World.

Peñitas, TX

Established in 1836, Peñitas Cemetery served the settlers of one of the Rio Grande Valley's historic communities, with its earliest marked grave dating to 1894 and older unmarked burials likely beneath. Among those resting here are two Tejano Union veterans of the Civil War — Private José María Loya and Sergeant Ignacio Zamora — alongside pioneer families and veterans of other wars. Marble tombstones, homemade crosses, and religious statues mark the graves, still tended by residents.

Austin, TX

In 1913 Austin philanthropist Nellie Wylie Holden built this Georgian Revival home, which tradition says her children helped noted architect Hugo F. Kuehne design, complete with sidelights, a fanlight, paired Doric columns, and Flemish-bond brickwork. Active in many civic and charitable organizations, in 1917 she married Alexander Penn Wooldridge, the prominent Austin mayor. She sold the house in 1943, and it survives with its original details largely intact.

Cisco, TX

Velzie Penn built this Cumberland-plan farmhouse in 1898–1899 with help from his brothers and neighbors, the kind of collective labor that raised many a frontier home. He and his wife Addie lived here more than fifty years and raised four sons born in the house. Enlarged over time and clad in local fieldstone in 1933, it endures as a record of a farming family's life.

Duncanville, TX

Two springs feeding a natural pool made this a vital watering place, first for Native peoples and later for the wagon trains and cattle drives moving along the Shawnee Trail. Major John Penn of Illinois settled his family here in the 1850s after first visiting in 1848, and on July 4, 1882, the springs hosted a Confederate reunion of Parson's Texas Cavalry. The Penns held the land until 1895 as Duncanville grew around it.

Pennington, TX

Eight settlers gathered in 1860 to form the Salem Baptist Church, with Elder R. A. Clifton as first pastor. After Daniel Dailey laid out the town of Pennington in 1866, the congregation bought this land and rebuilt, taking the name Pennington Baptist Church at an 1869 conference. Successive buildings in 1913 and 1955 traced the community's endurance across nearly a century.

Georgetown, TX

John Parker Pennington was born in Fannin County during the days of the Republic of Texas, came of age amid the dangers of frontier Arizona Territory, served in the Civil War, and brought his family back to Texas in 1867. This family burial ground opened in 1872 with the grave of his sister, and it holds Pennington, his two wives, and their descendants. The cemetery reads as a compact record of a restless nineteenth-century family's travels across a still-forming West.

Palestine, TX

Built in 1890 on Palestine's fashionable "Silk Stocking Row," this Victorian residence was home to Anna Pennybacker, a teacher and author whose school history of Texas shaped generations of students and who became the first Texan to lead the General Federation of Women's Clubs. In 1900 it passed to Thomas M. Campbell — lawyer, banker, and governor of Texas from 1907 to 1911 — who enlarged the house. It remained in his family for generations afterward.

Penwell, TX

Penwell was the cradle of Ector County's oil boom, born as the wide-open town of "Derrick City" in 1927 after driller Josh Cosden's late-1926 discovery—though the crowd scattered when the first well pumped only twenty barrels a day. A far richer strike on Robert Penn's land in 1929, followed by the 600-to-700-barrel Penn Well, revived the field, and a bustling tent city grew up around the post office established in 1930. It endured as a distribution and shipping hub, earning the name "The Crossroads of the Oil Patch."

Peoria, TX

Peoria Cemetery was established in the 1830s as this small Texas community formed, its first plot donated by J. R. DeArman and later grants made across four generations of the William Thomas Hill family. Tradition holds that a child fatally bitten by a rattlesnake was the first laid to rest here, joined over the years by many rural residents and travelers in unmarked graves.