Historic Markers in Texas

Teague, TX

Established around 1853, this burial ground dates to the first years of Anglo settlement in Freestone County, when small family and community cemeteries were among the earliest permanent marks a pioneer settlement left on the land. Recognized as a Historic Texas Cemetery, it preserves the resting place of the area's early residents.

Irene, TX

Burials at this Hill County site began in 1871, with the oldest surviving graves those of the infant Sheet twins and Synthia Green. In 1876 landowners deeded the ground to the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, for a church, school, and cemetery, and the still-active Salem Cemetery Association formed in 1904. Among the more than 800 people buried here is Nathaniel Addison, a veteran of the Texas Revolution.

Gainesville, TX

Hand-dug by local citizens in the late 1800s under P.G. Dotson's direction, this brick-lined well reached seventeen feet down to serve the Salem — later Shady Grove — community. Built to supply the nearby Salem School, it also watered homes, farms, churches, and livestock, and became a favorite gathering and courting spot for young couples. The adjoining school doubled as a church, and during World War II the community's women met there to pray for loved ones serving overseas.

Tomball, TX

This burial ground began as the Scherer family cemetery among the German immigrants who settled the Rosehill community of northwest Harris County beginning in 1846, arriving by way of the port of Galveston. The families who worshipped at Salem Lutheran Church laid their dead here, including three men killed in an 1864 powder-mill explosion and veterans reaching back to the Civil War. When George Scherer deeded the ground to the church in 1869, the cemetery took the congregation's name, and its German-language stones and obelisks still record the community's founding generation.

Port Lavaca, TX

Salem Lutheran grew out of the German Lutheran families who reached Texas through the ports of Indianola and Galveston in the 1800s. Members of the Kemper, Knipling, Rosenbaum, and Wehmeyer families organized the congregation in 1902, worshipping in German until 1920 and dedicating their own church in 1924. The congregation later built anew and moved to its Six Mile Road home in 1967.

Malone, TX

This congregation grew from the wave of German immigrants who first settled Washington County and began pushing into Hill County in the 1880s. In June 1886, fifteen families organized the Salem Lutheran Congregation, worshipping in homes while their first building rose. The Salem community it served became a forerunner of nearby Malone.

Brenham, TX

The Rev. Johann G. Ebinger and seventeen charter members organized this congregation in the German Salem community on November 22, 1856, first worshipping in a log cabin on land deeded by Wilhelm Bohne. In 1913 the church moved to its present site. As the second-oldest German Lutheran congregation in Washington County, Salem anchored local life with a cemetery, a school, and a succession of church societies stretching from the 1860s into the twentieth century.

Barclay, TX

Salem Lutheran Church was organized in a Falls County schoolhouse in 1901 by seventeen charter members, several drawn from the Welcome community in Austin County. A 1906 union with neighboring Cyclone Lutherans gave the young congregation the numbers to call its first resident pastor and acquire a former Methodist chapel for worship. A larger sanctuary followed in 1924 as the rural congregation grew.

Tomball, TX

German immigrants who settled the Tomball area founded Salem Lutheran Church, among the oldest Lutheran congregations in Texas, and by the 1850s were running an associated school first led by their pastors. Classes were taught in both English and German until World War II, and the one-room schoolhouse endured until 1947, when Salem joined with Zion Lutheran School. Teachers like the long-serving Herbert Buescher made the school a fixture of community life across nearly a century.

Teague, TX

One of the oldest congregations in Freestone County, Salem Predestinarian Baptist Church was founded in December 1853 by the Lee families, with elders Thomas Dossey and C. T. Echols certifying its constitution. A five-acre site donated by the McSwane family held first a log meetinghouse, later a frame building, and eventually the present chapel raised in 1961. Elder Dossey gave the church its name.

Brenham, TX

Rooted in the founding of Salem Lutheran Church in 1865 on land given by a German settler, the Salem schools taught reading, arithmetic, and religion in both German and English, and kept their board minutes in German until 1914. Opened to the public in 1886, the school grew room by room; one head teacher served as principal and instructor for 44 years. Consolidations over the twentieth century finally folded its students into Brenham's district in 1987.

Orange, TX

Six months after emancipation reached Texas in 1865, Black Methodists organized a mission conference on Christmas Day, and by 1868 its Orange mission was holding worship services. Formally named Salem Methodist Episcopal Church in 1873, the congregation built a frame church, hosted classes for African American schoolchildren, and grew steadily through the twentieth century. Its members became community leaders — ministers, educators, civil rights activists, an NAACP vice president, and the first Black and first female mayor of Orange.

Huntsville, TX

Raised on a North Carolina plantation and educated at the Greensboro College for Young Ladies, Sallie E. Gibbs came to Texas after the Civil War and married Huntsville merchant Sandford Gibbs in 1866. When he died in 1886, she took the reins of the family firm, spending three decades transforming it into one of East Texas's leading land, timber, and financial enterprises and co-founding Gibbs National Bank in 1890. Her success was mirrored in the grand Queen Anne home she built on this site in 1895.

Refugio, TX

In Civil War Texas, the Confederacy was cut off from Northern goods and blockaded at sea, making the overland "Cotton Road" to Mexico a lifeline. Sally Scull ran freight wagons down that dangerous route, trading baled cotton for guns, ammunition, medicine, and everyday supplies. A crack shot who dressed in trousers, carried a rifle and two pistols, and bossed her own armed crews, she did wartime work few men would risk.

Montague, TX

Settlers began arriving in the Bethel community in the 1870s, opening the Salona School by 1881 and, in 1889, setting aside land for a burial ground. A Civil War veteran was among the first laid to rest here in 1890, followed by many more, and beginning in 1897 residents gathered each May to tend the graves and share a potluck—a Decoration Day tradition still kept on the first Sunday of May. As the school consolidated and the settlement faded, the cemetery remained the community's living memory.

Jacksboro, TX

James N. Jonas and his wife Caroline settled the Salt Creek community around 1876. Two years later, when a child in a wagon-traveling family died nearby, the Jonases offered a place on their land to bury it — and later gave acreage for a full community cemetery, also known as Dark Corner. The historic Salt Creek schoolhouse still stands to the east and hosts the cemetery association's annual workday. Among nearly 200 graves are veterans reaching from the U.S.-Mexico War to the Korean conflict.

Gonzales County, TX

Long before Spanish or Anglo-American arrival, Native peoples drew salt from this natural flat beside Pilgrim Lake, where a salty "dew" still forms in damp weather. In the 1800s pioneer settlers processed salt here too, though never in great quantity. The modest site preserves a resource that mattered deeply to every people who lived on the land.

San Elizario, TX

For generations, the salt lakes near San Elizario had been a shared resource that Hispanic communities of the El Paso valley gathered from freely. When private interests moved to control access in the 1870s, resentment boiled over into the El Paso Salt War of 1877, a violent clash that cost many lives and much property. The conflict remains one of the most turbulent episodes in the history of the far West Texas borderlands.

San Elizario, TX

For generations, the salt lakes east of El Paso were a free resource anyone could gather from — until private claims collided with community right in the 1877 Salt War. After former judge Charles Howard shot his rival Luis Cardis over control of the beds, an enraged mob killed Howard and several state troopers protecting him at San Elizario. The violence drew federal and state investigators and led directly to the re-establishment of Fort Bliss in 1878.

Thorndale, TX

Settled in the 1860s and named for a nearby creek where cattle found salt licks, the Salty community grew up around a Methodist church, a cemetery, and a school by the late 1870s. Barbed-wire fencing sparked violence here in the 1880s, but the settlement matured into a precinct with stores, doctors, and its own annual singing convention founded around 1900 — a tradition that outlived the stores and school themselves.

Houston, TX

Sam Hopkins, born in Leon County in 1912, learned guitar from his brothers and from Texas blues pioneers before making Houston's Third Ward his home in the 1940s. Playing the clubs and street corners around Dowling Street, he was 'discovered' in 1946, picked up the nickname 'Lightnin',' and cut his first hit, 'Katy Mae.' Recording for early Houston labels like Gold Star, he became one of the most prolific bluesmen who ever lived, and the 1960s folk revival carried him from neighborhood dance parties all the way to Carnegie Hall.

McAllen, TX

Samuel Lynn and Marjorie Williams Miller were among the builders of early McAllen, with Sam's hand in nurseries, banking, real estate, and the Hidalgo International Bridge, and Marjorie active in civic life through the Order of the Eastern Star. In 1930 Sam donated 109 acres for a municipal airport that grew into McAllen Miller International. Their English Tudor Revival home, designed in 1937 from Marjorie's own plans after a trip to England, showcases local craftsmanship in stone, half-timbered gables, and gumwood detailing.

Moulton, TX

Named for the brothers who donated the land and half the cost—matched by their neighbors—the Sam and Will Moore Institute rose in Moulton with its cornerstone laid in July 1901 by the Order of Sons of Hermann. The dedication was a true community gala, with a parade, band concert, barbecue, ball, and speeches delivered in English, German, and Czech. Expanded in 1923, the building still serves as a school.

Moulton, TX

When the Sam and Will Moore Institute opened in 1901, this bell tolled the school day and soon doubled as the town's fire alarm. Its proudest moment came on November 11, 1918, when it rang out the news of the armistice ending World War I. Cast aside in 1939, the bell was restored in 1973 by former students and friends.

Mesquite, TX

On an April day in 1878, the notorious outlaw Sam Bass and his gang stopped a Texas & Pacific train near Mesquite and made off with $152—never suspecting a hidden shipment of $30,000 rode aboard. Bass had become one of the most hunted men in Texas, and his luck ran out just months later when Texas Rangers gunned him down during a planned bank robbery. His brief, violent career made him a fixture of frontier legend.

Round Rock, TX

An orphaned Indiana youth who drifted to Texas, Sam Bass won early fame racing his "Denton Mare" before turning to gambling and train robbery, famously scattering gold among those who sheltered him from the law. In July 1878 he rode into Round Rock intending to rob a bank, only to be gunned down by Texas Rangers. Refusing to the end to name his accomplices, he passed into legend as a subject of nineteenth-century ballads and lies buried in the old Round Rock Cemetery.

Huntsville, TX

Born in Virginia in 1793 and raised in Tennessee, Sam Houston fought under Andrew Jackson in the War of 1812 and rose to serve in Congress and as Tennessee's governor before heading west. Settling in Nacogdoches, he led the Army of the Republic to victory at San Jacinto in 1836, served twice as president of the Republic of Texas and later as U.S. senator and governor, and in 1861 refused to swear loyalty to the Confederacy, dying at Huntsville in 1863.

Houston, TX

The story of one of Houston's oldest schools begins with an 1856 bequest from Mayor James H. Stevens that founded the Houston Academy on a downtown block. Across more than a century it changed names, buildings and locations, served as a Confederate hospital during the Civil War, survived a 1919 fire, and produced Texas's first high-school newspaper and its first all-girls drum and bugle corps. Sam Houston spoke against secession here in 1860, and Lyndon B. Johnson taught debate at the school in 1930–31 before returning as president to give an education speech in 1964.

Liberty, TX

From 1833 until his death in 1863, Sam Houston maintained a deep tie to Liberty County, closing nine land deals covering nearly 20,000 acres and practicing law from an office facing the courthouse square. Even as he served as president of the Republic and later U.S. senator, he worshipped with his wife Margaret's Baptist congregation nearby.

San Augustine, TX

Sam Houston made San Augustine his own for three decades, opening a law practice on this site and using 'The Redlands' as a base for business, residence, and refuge. He is said to have recovered here from the Battle of San Jacinto and issued his battle report from the town; after his presidency of the Republic, its voters sent him to the Texas House. His divorce, his marriage to Margaret Lea, and much of his personal drama unfolded amid a community that championed him early.

Huntsville, TX

Born in Huntsville in 1864 to enslaved parents, Samuel W. Houston earned degrees from Hampton, Atlanta University, and Howard before returning home to build schools for African American children in an era when the state funneled only Black-paid taxes toward their education. Around 1906 he opened classes in the rented Galilee Methodist Church, and the Sam Houston Industrial and Training School grew to serve hundreds of students statewide with vocational and academic programs. Merged into the Huntsville school system by 1930, it became Sam Houston High School and endured until integration in 1968.

Gonzales County, TX

In March 1836, as Santa Anna's army pushed east after the fall of the Alamo, General Sam Houston pitched his headquarters beneath a great oak near Gonzales during the anxious retreat known as the Runaway Scrape. Here his small, ragged force gathered volunteers streaming in from the eastern settlements. From this camp they marched on toward the decisive fight at San Jacinto.

Houston, TX

Sam Houston Park grew from land Nathaniel Kellum bought along Buffalo Bayou in the 1840s, where he ran a brick factory and tannery and built a brick house in 1847. The City of Houston purchased the tract in 1899 to create its first designated public park, renamed for Sam Houston in 1903. When the city moved to raze the aging Kellum-Noble House in the 1950s, preservation-minded citizens organized to save it—founding what became The Heritage Society and turning the park into a home for historic and replica structures downtown.

Marshall, TX

The Marshall school board bought this two-acre site in 1903 and opened an eight-room brick schoolhouse, designed by architect C. G. Lancaster, in 1905. First known as the East Side School and serving Anglo children in the town's growing eastern district, it was renamed for Sam Houston in the early 1920s. It taught local students for more than seventy-five years before closing in 1981.

Gilmer, TX

In the tense years before the Civil War, the aging hero of Texas independence returned to a spot along the old Cherokee Trace — ground he had known decades earlier while living among the Cherokee. Speaking here first as a U.S. Senator in 1857 and again as governor in 1861, Sam Houston warned his fellow Texans against leaving the Union, a stand that would soon cost him his office.

Marshall, TX

On May 23, 1857, during his first run for Texas governor, the Unionist Sam Houston came to Marshall—hometown of two of his fiercest secessionist critics—to debate his opponent Hardin Runnels. Speaking beneath an oak in overwhelmingly pro-secession country, Houston was so commanding that Runnels declined to answer. Houston lost the election but still carried nearly half the Harrison County vote.

Cochran, TX

In the anxious weeks after the fall of the Alamo and the Goliad massacre in the spring of 1836, Sam Houston's outnumbered Texian army fell back east and made camp along the Brazos. Here Houston drilled his raw recruits, absorbed fresh reinforcements and supplies, and took delivery of the "Twin Sisters" cannon that would soon see action. From this staging ground he crossed the river and marched to the decisive victory at San Jacinto on April 21.

Nacogdoches, TX

When Sam Houston left Washington for Texas in late 1832, he chose Nacogdoches as his first home, drawn by fellow Tennesseans and Masons like Adolphus Sterne and Henry Raguet. He boarded with the Sternes, set up a law practice, and was baptized Catholic so he could own property under Mexican law. From here he was elected a delegate to the conventions that led toward revolution, and his lifelong friendship with Thomas J. Rusk — later a fellow Texas senator — was forged in this town.

Nacogdoches, TX

This 1880 farmhouse is a fine example of the East Texas homestead, originally boasting five rooms, four porches, and an enclosed dog-trot passage. It was built for farmer Samuel Pharr Smith and his wife Mary by her brother, a local cabinetmaker who also crafted the woodwork and some of the furniture. Sam and Mary raised twelve children here and lived in the house until they both died in 1941, a testament to the rooted, self-sufficient life of a Texas farm family.

Bonham, TX

Sam Rayburn came to Texas with his family as a boy in 1887 and rose from the state legislature to one of the most powerful posts in American government. Across 25 straight terms in the U.S. House, he served alongside eight presidents and held the Speaker's gavel for 17 years — longer than anyone before him. When he died in 1961, some 30,000 mourners, including four presidents, came to his funeral in Bonham.

Bonham, TX

In 1916, three years into his long career in the U.S. Congress, Sam Rayburn built this Bonham home for his parents after they left their farm at Windom. Originally a two-story house with a porch on each floor, it was enlarged in 1934 by architect W. B. Yarborough into "The Home Place," its porches reworked into a two-story portico. Rayburn lived here with family whenever he was away from Washington, and the house became a museum after being deeded to the Texas Historical Commission in 1972.

Bonham, TX

Speaker Sam Rayburn, who represented this North Texas district for more than 55 years and led the U.S. House for a record 17 of them, planned this facility with Dallas architect Roscoe DeWitt to hold his archives, books and artifacts. Built in 1955–57 in the Classical Revival style of Washington's federal buildings—marble façade, copper roof, Ionic columns—it even contains an exact replica of the Speaker's Capitol office.

Mineral Wells, TX

In March 1866, five-year-old Sam Savage survived a Comanche raid on his father's Parker County farm that killed his father Bolin and his uncle James; Sam, his brother, and a cousin were carried off into captivity. After a posse failed to overtake the raiders, trader John Fields located the children that November and ransomed them for $414 at Fort Arbuckle. Sam went on to become a rancher, farmer, and champion fiddler, living to 90 and often recounting the months he spent learning the Comanche language and the bow before his return.

Canyon, TX

Sam Wood raised this cabin in 1887 at Hog Town, now a Panhandle ghost town. A Union Civil War veteran, buffalo hunter, and Indian scout, Wood was father of the bride in the first marriage recorded in the Panhandle, held at Fort Elliott in 1877, and his cabin once sheltered six families during an Indian scare. Moved and restored in 1954, it survives as a rare relic of frontier life on the high plains.

Decatur, TX

Tennessee-born pioneer Sam Woody (1826–1920) reached Texas in the 1840s and brought his family to Wise County in 1854, where friends and kin raised this log cabin near Deep Creek in a single day. As the area's first dwelling it became a hub of frontier hospitality, a trading spot where Native people exchanged buffalo robes and moccasins for corn, and a haven where travelers were never turned away. Woody helped guard the settlements as a ranger and served in the Confederate army during the Civil War.

Austin, TX

Master builder Abner Cook completed this structure in 1860, on the eve of the Civil War, to house the general merchandise store of George W. Sampson and Abram Henricks. After Henricks died in 1865, Sampson kept an office here and leased out the rest for other commercial and professional tenants. Its Italianate arched windows and fine stonework have watched over the street while the building stayed in the Sampson family for well over a century.

Highlands, TX

Chartered in 1859 and named for Henry Sampson, a South Carolina transplant who rose to grand master of the Grand Lodge of Texas, this lodge began in a purpose-built log cabin near Lynchburg. Fire and a succession of Gulf Coast hurricanes drove the lodge from Lynchburg to Crosby and finally to Highlands in 1951, where it turned increasingly toward community service. Its members mark local life through parades, fundraisers, and charity that still anchor the town today.

Honey Grove, TX

Virginia-born Samuel Erwin, married in Tennessee in a ceremony performed by the frontiersman David Crockett, became the first settler of the Honey Grove area when he arrived in 1837. A surveyor by trade, he laid out land grants for fellow pioneers and platted the townsite for his friend B. S. Walcott in 1848. He also served as the town's first postmaster and one of Fannin County's earliest justices of the peace.

Burkburnett, TX

Samuel Burk Burnett came to Texas from Missouri just after the Civil War and, partnering with his father-in-law, founded the famous Four Sixes (6666) Ranch in 1875. He grew into one of the state's most powerful cattlemen and a leading force in Fort Worth business. By tradition, the town of Burkburnett was named at the suggestion of President Theodore Roosevelt after a 1905 wolf hunt with Burnett.

Ganado, TX

Virginia-born Samuel C. A. Rogers took up arms with the Texan army and fought in the Siege of San Antonio in 1835, an early campaign of the Texas Revolution. He lived to 1892, and he lies buried in Jackson County alongside his wife, Mary. His marker keeps the memory of one of the ordinary volunteers who won Texas independence.

Huntsville, TX

Samuel Calhoun, born in South Carolina in 1788 and a cavalry captain in Georgia during the War of 1812, came to Texas in 1845 and acquired land near the ferry that bore his name in Walker County. He raised a large family across two marriages and saw sons serve in the Mexican War and the Civil War. Generations of his descendants lie buried on the ground he established, though his own tomb was carried by steamer to Cincinnati in 1872.

West Columbia, TX

Massachusetts-born Samuel Damon came to Texas in 1831 and joined the fight for independence, serving as a wagonmaster for Stephen F. Austin at the Siege of Bexar and famously taking the mission bells to be melted into bullets for the rebel cause. He aided Sam Houston's 1836 campaign and later earned a Republic of Texas land grant. Settling in Brazoria County, he gave his name to the mineral-rich Damon Mound and worked half a century as the town brickmaker.

Dallas, TX

Born in Dallas in 1906 and raised in Oak Cliff, Samuel David Dealey, Jr. became one of the most daring submarine commanders of World War II. Leading the USS Harder on a legendary run of Pacific war patrols, he sank many enemy vessels and earned his crew a Presidential Unit Citation before he and his men were lost off the Philippines in 1944. He was awarded the Medal of Honor, ranking among the most decorated sailors of the war.

Whitewright, TX

Civil War veteran Sam Marshall and his wife Mary came from Kentucky to Grayson County in the late 1860s and moved to the new railroad town of Whitewright by 1880. Prospering in land and commerce, they built this Queen Anne Free Classic house in 1899–1900, rich with a gabled roof, classical columns, decorative woodwork, and a balconied porch. After Mary's death in 1924 it passed through several local families.

Crockett, TX

A Georgia native and Civil War veteran, Samuel Fisher Tenney (1840-1926) graduated from the University of Georgia and a South Carolina seminary before settling in Crockett in 1870. For 54 years he served as pastor of the First Presbyterian Church, while also helping build educational facilities for Black residents and starting a mission in 1880 for the Alabama-Coushatta Indians in Polk County. His long ministry left a deep mark on the region.

Willow Point, TX

A Tennessee native, Samuel G. Evetts came to Texas in the 1830s and was wounded at the Siege of Bexar in December 1835, an early clash of the Texas Revolution. He later lived in several counties, earning land grants for his Republic of Texas military service and a state pension in 1870, before moving to Wise County, where he died in 1884. Thrice married and father of eleven, he saw his name spelled variously as Evetts and Evitts over the years.

Orange, TX

Born in northern Ireland in 1832, Samuel H. Levingston left home at fourteen and learned ship carpentry in Apalachicola, Florida, before moving near present-day Orange just before the Civil War. He served the Confederacy as a ship carpenter and blockade runner, then returned to build paddle-wheel boats hauling cotton down the Sabine. His son George later grew the family trade into the Levingston Shipbuilding Company, and the land the family once farmed became a city park.

Waco, TX

Born in Sweden in 1828, Samuel Johan Forsgard joined the first wave of Swedish immigration to Texas in 1855 and settled in Waco, where he opened a bakery, restaurant, and confectionery. He served in the Confederate Army during the Civil War, then returned to business, patented farming equipment, and helped establish a sporting goods company. Over more than fifty years he became a well-known figure in the city's 19th-century growth.

Weatherford, TX

This memorial gathers a family whose lives spanned continents and the violent frontier. Mary Yergins, born in Germany, was captured by Indians in 1836; shortly afterward she gave birth to a daughter, Jane, and mother and child were later ransomed. Mary went on to marry Samuel Joseph Redgate, an England-born settler who served in the Texas Legislature from 1858 to 1861. The State of Texas erected the marker in 1936 to preserve their intertwined story.

Round Top, TX

Samuel Knight Lewis left a Mississippi plantation to bring his family to Texas in 1838, serving Austin County in the Republic of Texas House of Representatives before settling near Round Top in 1848. Sensing opportunity along a planned stage route, he bought land whose home grew into a welcome stopping place for travelers, later known as the Winedale Inn. Given to the University of Texas in the 1960s, the property became the heart of the Winedale Historical Center.