Historic Markers in Texas

Riviera, TX

Founded in 1910, just three years after the town of Riviera itself, this congregation began with 31 charter members meeting in a one-room schoolhouse before building its sanctuary in 1912. The church anchored a sprawling South Texas district of vegetable and citrus farms. Through hurricanes and drought that shrank the town, it has held on in that same 1912 building.

Corsicana, TX

Roane Baptist Church was organized in 1897 by 26 charter members, who first worshiped monthly in the Roane School building under their first pastor, the Rev. E. T. Jones. In 1901 they built a church of their own on land donated by two local men, and the congregation called its first full-time pastor in 1948. Improved over the years, the church remains an integral part of its community.

Roanoke, TX

When the Texas & Pacific Railroad pushed through North Texas in 1881, a surveyor homesick for Roanoke, Virginia gave this new depot town its name — though settlers had been working the land here since the 1840s. Sitting halfway between Fort Worth and Denton, Roanoke thrived as a shipping point where ranchers loaded cattle for northern markets and farmers sent out wheat and cotton. By 1890 it had four churches, a school, and a cotton gin; by the early 1900s a newspaper, bank, and grain elevator. Notably, the property of John and Almedia Jones served as a stop on the Underground Railroad.

Roanoke, TX

In 1897 members of the local Independent Order of Odd Fellows lodge bought this five-and-a-half-acre tract as a public burial ground, open to all rather than reserved for their own families. Its stones tell the story of a young North Texas community — pioneer families, a railroad crew's section from the 1920s, and even an alleged horse thief hanged from a tree here in 1906. James DeWitt Pressley, who died in 1897, was the first laid to rest.

Roanoke, TX

Chartered in 1888, Roanoke Lodge No. 668 succeeded an earlier Masonic lodge from nearby Elizabethtown, meeting in rented rooms until members raised a two-story frame hall in 1908. The upper floor was reserved for Masonic ritual while the ground floor opened to the wider community. Fraternal lodges like this one were pillars of civic, educational, and charitable life in small North Texas towns.

Roanoke, TX

Rising about 150 feet on four steel legs, the Roanoke Water Tower was built in 1936 as the newly incorporated town's primary water source. First mayor Hugh H. Jenkins championed the municipal water system, consolidating it under the city in 1934 and securing Public Works Administration funding during the Great Depression to construct the tower and its 100,000-gallon tank. Though no longer in service, it still stands as a local landmark.

Ranger, TX

When World War I drove oil demand sky-high, Texas Pacific Coal Company manager W.K. Gordon gambled on deep drilling, and in October 1917 the McClesky No. 1 blew in as a 1,700-barrel-a-day gusher a mile south of here. Later wells yielded many thousands of barrels daily, and a village of a dozen houses exploded into a boomtown so crowded that beds were shared in shifts and stuffed chairs were rented for sleeping. Amid a two-year sea of mud, easy money drew both fortune-seekers and vice, until lawmen cracked down after five murders in a single day.

Roaring Springs, TX

When the Quanah, Acme & Pacific Railroad pushed across Motley County in the early 1910s, it created towns along its route, and Roaring Springs was platted in 1912 in anticipation of the tracks. This brick mission-revival depot was completed within a year and handled passengers and freight into 1971. Now the town's oldest building, it was bought by the city in 1972 and recognized as a Recorded Texas Historic Landmark.

Cross Roads, TX

Stoneware pottery was vital everyday industry in 19th-century Texas, and this site was one of five kilns that made Denton County a pottery center. Missouri-trained master potter James M. Roark apprenticed nearby before partnering to start a pottery works near Big Elm Creek in 1871, later selling it to the Griffith family. At its heart was a 12-foot beehive brick kiln that fired utilitarian ware—pitchers, crocks, churns, and preserve jars—until the business closed around 1900.

Midway, TX

Where the San Antonio and La Bahia roads met the Trinity River, travelers once forded a spot called Paso Tomas. About 1821 Joel Leakey established a ferry here, and it took its lasting name from Nathaniel Robbins, who ran it for years. The Clapp family acquired the crossing around 1852 and operated it until a bridge finally replaced the ferry in 1930.

Palestine, TX

Orphaned young and raised at the state orphans' home in Corsicana, Robert "Bob" Knight found his footing as a class president and team captain before starring on a championship football team at Sam Houston State. In 1937 he began a long career coaching basketball, volleyball, and physical education in the Palestine schools, also running the summer baseball league and working at the YMCA. Apart from World War II service training Navy personnel to swim, he coached and mentored Palestine's young people for more than three decades until his 1974 retirement.

Navasota, TX

Alabama-born Robert Augustus Horlock arrived in Navasota in 1871 and rose to become one of its leading merchants and civic figures. In the early 1890s he and his wife Agnes built this ornate home in the Eastlake and Stick styles, all corner porch, arched windows, and finely turned woodwork. It stayed in the Horlock family for nearly a century.

Terrell, TX

Robert Adams Terrell wandered from Tennessee through Kentucky, Missouri, and Louisiana before reaching the Republic of Texas around 1840. As a surveyor he located headright land grants across North Texas—paid in vast tracts of land—served in Republic expeditions, and enlisted in the Confederate Army in 1861. The town of Terrell rose on land he had surveyed and took his name.

Terrell, TX

This octagon-shaped house was built in 1864 for Robert A. Terrell (1820–1881), a pioneer settler whose 1845 log cabin once stood here and for whom the town of Terrell was named. Octagon houses were a briefly fashionable American experiment, believed to offer better light and air, and few survive in Texas today. The home passed through a succession of owners after 1897.

Dallas, TX

Robert Campbell Stubbs came to Dallas from Mississippi in 1887 and built a paving business just as the automobile age created enormous demand for modern streets; by 1922 he had patented a 'vibrolithic' paving method and was regarded as a leading national authority. His success paid for this stately Tudor-style home on fashionable Swiss Avenue, completed in 1926 and possibly designed by Dallas architect Otto H. Lang. Stubbs died a year later, and his widow Marie entertained here into 1940 before the house passed through use as apartments and back to a single family.

San Antonio, TX

Robert B. Evans left Tennessee in 1847 and joined the 1849 rush to California, where he panned enough gold to buy this Texas land in 1865. Built in 1882 of stone quarried from Buda, the house sheltered Evans, his wife Rebecca, and the nine children they raised here; an 1865 smokehouse still stands on the east side. It earned recognition as a Recorded Texas Historic Landmark in 1969.

Wortham, TX

Robert B. Longbotham (1797–1883) was born in Sunderland, England, and crossed the Atlantic as a carpenter's apprentice aboard ship. After marrying in Alabama, he came to Texas in 1832, secured a land grant from Mexico, and fought in the 1836 Texas Revolution and in Indian conflicts of 1839. He settled at this place in 1848, and the town bore his name until its post office was renamed Wortham in 1874.

Orange, TX

Robert B. Russell's life traces the arc of nineteenth-century Texas itself. A Connecticut-born young man, he came to San Augustine in 1835 and fought at San Jacinto, the 1836 battle that won Texas its independence, before turning to newspaper publishing on the frontier. He later settled in the raw lumber country around Orange, served as its postmaster during the Confederacy, and built a steam-powered shingle mill—only to die in a mill accident in 1880.

Houston, TX

Robert Barr fought at San Jacinto, the 1836 battle that won Texas its independence, and went on to serve the young Republic of Texas as postmaster general under both Sam Houston and Mirabeau Lamar. An Ohio native, he died of yellow fever in Houston in 1839, a reminder of how disease stalked the coastal republic. His burial by the Masonic and Odd Fellows lodges and the Milam Guards reflects the tight civic fraternity of frontier Houston.

Salado, TX

Arriving in Bell County around 1853, Georgia-born Robert B. Halley helped turn a frontier settlement into a working community, running a liquor distillery and a flour-and-grist mill on the Lampasas River. He served as county commissioner and a state Democratic convention delegate, then recruited and captained a volunteer cavalry company during the Civil War. Elected county sheriff in 1874, he died in office the following year.

Chico, TX

Robert Calvin Mount came from Tennessee to Texas in 1855 and helped organize the brand-new Wise County, winning election as its first tax assessor-collector in 1856. During the Civil War he served as a first lieutenant in Blythe's militia, and in 1874 he built a fort-like rock house near Chico as protection on a still-dangerous frontier. He is remembered as one of the county's founding pioneers.

Paris, TX

Robert Cooke Buckner arrived in Texas in 1859 and became a leading Baptist minister, pastoring this Paris congregation and helping charter the first Ladies' Aid group in the state. In 1877 he founded a Baptist orphans' home, giving the first dollar himself under a shady oak in Dallas. That seed grew into the sprawling network of charities known today as Buckner Benevolences.

Winters, TX

Robert Cooke, a Texas-born son of pioneers, earned his medical degree in Kentucky in 1886 and came to the Winters area in 1889, becoming the fledgling town's first physician. He doubled as a man of the church — a Baptist deacon and later preacher — beloved as both healer of bodies and shepherd of souls.

Austin, TX

This headstone marks the grave of Robert Crudup (1804–1870), remembered on its reverse as a member of the Twelfth Legislature. That body convened in 1870 during Reconstruction, as Texas rebuilt its government after the Civil War. The spare inscription preserves the memory of a man who helped shape the state at a turbulent political moment.

Hearne, TX

Robert Cyrus Allen (1871–1933) built this ornate Victorian home in 1900 as a wedding present for his bride, Florence Blair, on the site of his family's earlier house. A leading merchant, banker, mayor, and organizer of the Hearne and Brazos Valley Railroad, Allen commissioned noted Waco architect W. W. Larmour to design a residence rich with decorative shingling, classical detailing, intricate woodwork, and seven fireplaces.

Seguin, TX

Born in Kentucky in 1806, Robert D. McAnelly came to Texas in 1835 and joined the army marching on San Antonio. He was among the storming party that entered Bexar on December 5, 1835, one of the opening blows of the Texas Revolution against Mexican rule. He lived out his days in Guadalupe County, dying there in 1888, and the State of Texas raised this marker to him in 1962.

Fort Worth, TX

Fort Worth native Robert David Law enlisted in the Army in 1967, trained as an airborne infantryman, and joined a Ranger company of the 75th Infantry in Vietnam. On February 22, 1969, while on a small patrol near the Cambodian border, his rangers came under fire and a grenade landed among them—Law threw himself onto it, dying instantly to save his comrades. In 1970 President Nixon presented his family with a posthumous Medal of Honor, the nation's highest award for valor.

Giddings, TX

Robert and Sarah McClellan opened Giddings' first private school in 1874 and, when the town organized its public free schools in 1883, they led the very first faculty. Robert, remembered as a gifted mathematician, taught until his death, while Sarah stayed at her post more than a decade longer. Together they set the standards that shaped local education for generations.

Brownwood, TX

Raised in the small towns of Brown and Callahan counties, Robert E. Howard began publishing fiction while still in school and went on to write poetry and pulp stories for popular magazines. In 1932 he created Conan the Barbarian, virtually inventing the sword-and-sorcery genre before his death by suicide at just thirty. Through books, magazines, and movies, his Conan has since become a worldwide cultural figure.

Baytown, TX

When oil transformed the Goose Creek field after 1908, the booming tri-cities of Goose Creek, Pelly, and Baytown needed a school to match, and in 1928 architect Harry D. Payne delivered a striking Art Deco building. Named Robert E. Lee High School in an era when the Confederate general's memory was widely honored locally, it became the civic heart of the district, hosting churches, clubs, and even a junior college's night classes. It survived an arson fire in 1987, restored by alumni to its original appearance.

Rio Grande City, TX

This house overlooking a Rio Grande steamboat dock served as field quarters for Colonel Robert E. Lee in 1860, when he commanded U.S. Army forces in Texas along the turbulent Mexican border. Its main rooms were lined with military maps of the surrounding country, reflecting the strategic concerns of the era. Within a year Lee would resign to lead Confederate armies, making his Texas posting one of the last chapters of his prewar career.

Dallas, TX

On land once part of a Republic-era grant, a streetcar company opened Oak Lawn Park in 1903, luring weekend riders and prospective buyers out on a nickel fare. The City of Dallas bought the leafy grounds in 1909, and in 1936 the Dallas Southern Memorial Association placed a bronze statue of Robert E. Lee here, unveiled by President Franklin D. Roosevelt; a scaled replica of Lee's Arlington home followed in 1938. The park long remained one of the city's most popular retreats.

Leming, TX

Robert E. Neill came to Texas as a small boy in the 1830s and, though a childhood accident crippled his left arm, went on to soldier through three of the era's conflicts. He served in the U.S. Army during the Mexican-American War of 1847, rode with the Texas Rangers on frontier duty, and closed his military life fighting for the Confederacy. Afterward he returned to ranching in Atascosa County, where he raised five children and died in 1878.

Austin, TX

South Carolina–born Robert Eanes brought his family to Travis County in 1872, following a brother who had settled the area decades earlier. Buying a ranch from that brother, he built the first school in the neighborhood, and both the community and the school came to bear the Eanes name. He was laid to rest here in 1895 beside his wife, Eliza.

San Marcos, TX

This one-story frame house was built in 1906 by local contractor H. C. Leffingwell for Robert Early McKie, a San Marcos native, attorney, and descendant of area pioneers. Costing $2,000, it blends Italianate tall windows with Colonial Revival porch columns, topped by a pyramidal roof and wraparound porch. It has been a Recorded Texas Historic Landmark since 1989.

Albany, TX

Albany native Robert "Bobby" Nail carried a Princeton-honed literary talent back to his small West Texas hometown, directing theater across North Texas before settling home for good. In 1938 he penned the pageant that grew into the Fort Griffin Fandangle, an outdoor musical that has become the oldest of its kind in Texas and still fills Albany's summers. His name endures through the Old Jail Art Center, a scholarship fund, and an archive of his work.

Belton, TX

Robert Emmet Bledsoe Baylor served in the legislatures of Kentucky and Alabama and in the U.S. Congress before coming to Texas in 1839, where he became an associate justice of the Republic's Supreme Court and a long-serving district judge. A lay Baptist preacher, he carried his Bible alongside his law books, holding court one day and preaching the next after riding as far as fifty miles between towns. He helped organize the Texas Baptist Convention and lent his name to Baylor University and Mary Hardin-Baylor College, and he sat on the bench as Texas pioneered homestead and community-property protections.

Independence, TX

R.E.B. Baylor, a Kentucky native who served in the War of 1812 and the Creek War, rose in law and politics before moving to Texas in 1839. He became a judge of the Republic of Texas Supreme Court and, after a religious conversion, helped found the Texas Baptist Education Society and worked with W.M. Tryon and J.G. Thomas to charter Baylor University in 1845. The university opened at Independence, where Baylor taught law without pay and served as a trustee before his death in 1873.

El Paso, TX

Robert Ewing Thomason gave more than fifty years to public life, serving as an El Paso attorney, state legislator, mayor, U.S. congressman, and federal judge. As Speaker of the Texas House he helped win the state's ratification of the 19th Amendment, urging colleagues to let "the American woman walk by the side of the American man to the ballot box." In Congress he helped establish Big Bend National Park and expand Fort Bliss, and as a federal judge appointed by President Truman he presided in this courthouse over landmark cases, including the 1955 Thelma White desegregation case.

Alto, TX

An Ohio native, Robert F. Mitchell arrived in the Republic of Texas in 1837 and, after a stint in the mercantile trade at Nacogdoches, settled in Cherokee County in 1849. His land on the high ground between the Neches and Angelina rivers became the townsite of Alto — Latin for "high." A storekeeper, ginner, and hotelkeeper, Mitchell was a driving force in the young town's growth over the following decades.

Llano, TX

Llano County leader Robert Flack "Bob" Rowntree built this majestic two-story house between 1875 and 1888, its 20-inch sandstone-and-limestone walls designed by Scottish architect John K. Finlay, a pioneer of the Texas granite industry. Each of its eight rooms had a fireplace, and porches on both floors looked out over Prairie and Rough Mountains from his 8,500-acre ranch. Rowntree died suddenly in 1893, a death some tied to his role in the region's Hoodoo War, and the house later passed to the Marschall family.

Longview, TX

A largely self-educated native of Vermont, Robert G. LeTourneau built his first plant in 1921 and went on to invent components that became standard in construction equipment worldwide. During World War II his company built roughly seventy percent of the earthmoving machinery used by U.S. forces, and afterward he moved to Longview, opened a plant, and founded the technical institute that became LeTourneau University. He poured much of his fortune into a worldwide Christian missionary foundation and became one of Longview's most influential civic leaders.

New Summerfield, TX

Born in North Carolina, Robert Graves Stadler had already served in the War of 1812 and fought for Texas independence before buying land here in 1845 near the community of Griffin. By 1853 he had drawn relatives from North Carolina to settle around him, laying the groundwork for the farming community that became Blackjack. He died just as the Civil War began.

Victoria, TX

Robert Clark, a Pennsylvania native and Mexican War veteran who was severely wounded in that conflict, built his fortune in South Texas as a merchant and cattle trader in partnership with Charles Stillman. After an 1875 hurricane battered the port of Indianola, he moved his family inland to Victoria, where in 1877 he raised this frame Greek Revival house with its central portico and boxed columns. He and his wife Pauline are remembered for their civic contributions to the growing town.

Negley, TX

Robert Hamilton, born in Scotland in 1783, cast his lot with the Texas independence movement and on March 2, 1836, was among the delegates who signed the Texas Declaration of Independence at Washington-on-the-Brazos. He settled in Red River County, where he died in 1843, during the years of the young Republic of Texas.

Flatonia, TX

This grave marker, set with the Star and Wreath of the Texas Revolution, honors a man who fought through the pivotal campaigns of Texas independence. Robert Hancock Hunter stood at Gonzales — where the "Come and Take It" defiance sparked the revolt — through the Siege of Bexar, and finally at San Jacinto in April 1836, the eighteen-minute battle that won the Republic of Texas. The State of Texas placed this memorial in 1962.

Bryan, TX

Born in Ireland in 1801, Robert Henry came to America in 1820 and to Robertson's Colony in Texas in 1832. In the 1836 war for independence he served with the 2nd Regiment of Texas Volunteer Infantry and was among the victors at San Jacinto. A staunch Presbyterian who prized his faith and a prominent figure in public life, he held a justice-of-the-peace court in the shade of trees and raised thirteen children whose descendants became noted Texans.

Columbus, TX

A Georgia-born doctor's son, Robert Henry Harrison earned his medical degree in 1846 and served as a Confederate colonel before settling in Columbus in 1869. From his office on the town square he became a founder and president of the State Medical Association, helped create Texas' Board of Health, wrote prolifically on medicine, and in 1880 built a hospital for railway workers.

San Marcos, TX

Part of this San Marcos structure began about 1859 as one of the town's first schools before the Rev. Robert H. Belvin, president of the Methodist Coronal Institute, converted it into a family home in 1875. Later owners enlarged it, and it eventually housed a professor from the first faculty of what became Southwest Texas State University, tying the building to the town's long educational heritage.

Kingsville, TX

Kingsville's public library began as a project of the Woman's Club in 1909 and moved in 1927 into this Spanish colonial revival building, erected under the leadership of club president Mrs. John D. Finnegan. The land was donated from the Henrietta M. King Estate by cattleman Robert J. Kleberg, for whom the library was named. It served the community from this site for three decades.

Pearland, TX

Robert Lee Hunter descended from Dr. Johnson Calhoun Hunter, one of Stephen F. Austin's Old Three Hundred colonists, and grew up on the family's Fort Bend County plantation. Around 1903 he sold his holdings and moved to Pearland, then known as Mark Belt, to raise cattle with his brother-in-law, and in 1905 he married Nebraska-born Julia Iva Martin, whose family had settled the area in 1894. Respected community members remembered for offering advice and hospitality to former slaves, the couple later had a Pearland park named in their honor.

Victoria, TX

This late-Victorian house was built in the 1890s for Robert Lewis Dabney (1820–1898), a Presbyterian theologian, teacher, and author who had served as chief of staff to Confederate General Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson in 1862. After teaching in Austin and helping establish a school of theology there, Dabney and his wife settled in Victoria and built this home. In 1922 it passed to Dr. Oscar McMullen, Victoria's first city health officer, and remained in his family for generations.

Crowell, TX

Foard County honors Robert L. Foard (1831–1898), a Maryland-born lawyer who came to Texas in 1853 and served the Confederacy as a major in the 13th Texas Infantry. His regiment guarded the Texas coast against Union raiding parties and briefly campaigned in Louisiana in 1863, as the South fought to keep the Mississippi River open. The State of Texas erected this memorial in 1963 to Texans who served the Confederacy.

Medina County, TX

Robert Lee Bobbitt rose from a North Texas farm to the heights of state government, serving as a World War I infantry officer, a legislator, Speaker of the Texas House, and Attorney General by 1929. As chairman of the Texas Highway Commission from 1937, he helped drive the state toward a connected system of paved roads during a transformative era for travel. His long public career touched nearly every branch of Texas government across four decades.

Robert Lee, TX

Established in 1891, two years after the town of Robert Lee was founded, this West Texas cemetery was sold for a token dollar by a land and cattle company to the local Masonic lodge for use as a burial ground. Already holding a few graves, it became the resting place of the community's founding families. Among them lie 34 Civil War veterans, along with soldiers of later American wars.

Bastrop, TX

Robert Love Reding, born in Tennessee in 1810, joined the Army of Texas and took part in the capture of Goliad on October 9, 1835, one of the opening actions of the Texas Revolution. He was also a signer of the Goliad Declaration of Independence, an early call for Texas separation from Mexico. He died in 1849, and this marker in Bastrop County honors his part in the fight for Texas independence.

Coleman, TX

Kentucky-born Robert M. Coleman came to Texas in 1832 and threw himself into the revolution, commanding volunteers at the Siege of Bexar in December 1835. As a delegate he signed the Texas Declaration of Independence in 1836 and then served as aide-de-camp to General Sam Houston at the decisive Battle of San Jacinto. He later took up arms as a Texas Ranger on the frontier before his death in 1837.

Tehuacana, TX

Robert M. Love was among the armed men who helped seat the 14th Texas Legislature in 1873 during the tense standoff when outgoing Governor E. J. Davis contested Richard Coke's election. A Confederate veteran of Ross' brigade, he went on to serve as Limestone County deputy sheriff and sheriff, president of the Texas Sheriff's Association, U.S. Marshal, and finally state comptroller from 1901 to 1903. His career threads through some of the sharpest political conflicts of Reconstruction-era Texas.

Anahuac, TX

Robert McAlpin Williamson, nicknamed "Three-Legged Willie" for the pegleg he wore after a boyhood illness, settled in Texas in 1827 to practice law. At Fort Anahuac in 1832 he made a bold stand against the Mexican commandant Juan Davis Bradburn, who had jailed his friends Patrick Jack and William Barret Travis — an early flashpoint on the road to revolution. Williamson went on to fight at San Jacinto and serve as a district judge and justice of the Republic's first supreme court.

Mineola, TX

A Georgia-born son of a Methodist minister, Robert N. Stafford settled in Mineola in 1880 and served as county attorney, district attorney, and, from 1894, a member of the Texas Senate. A steady advocate of public education, he donated two acres of land in 1902 for an African American school in Mineola. Alongside his political career he edited a newspaper, worked for the railroad, and managed the town's ice and light company.