Historic Markers in Texas

Fayetteville, TX

In the mid-1890s, waves of Central European immigrants were reshaping the rolling farmland of Fayette County, and among them was Bohemian settler R. J. Sladek, who raised this trim Victorian cottage around 1896. Within a few years it passed to Anna Hillman, widow of one of Fayetteville's early settlers, who kept house here until 1923. Its 12-foot ceilings, intricate millwork, bracketed porch columns, and fish-scale bay window capture the modest elegance of a Texas prairie town coming into its own.

Ennis, TX

Ennis was founded in 1887 as the northern terminus of the Houston and Texas Central Railroad, later part of the Southern Pacific system, and named for railroad official Cornelius Ennis. A major expansion in 1891 brought shops, a roundhouse, offices, and reservoir lakes, fueling decades of growth. The town earned a reputation as the junction where railroads met cotton fields, and several of those railroad buildings and lakes survive.

San Antonio, TX

George T. Southwell, a Victoria County rancher's son, moved to San Antonio in 1912 and two years later bought a rubber-stamp company whose roots reached back to 1866. Under his son Wilson, the firm grew from a handful of employees to more than fifty, adding a foundry to cast metal signs and plaques. Renamed The Southwell Company in 1953, it became a leading maker of official Texas historical markers, producing bronze pieces for the 1936 Centennial and thousands of markers since 1962.

Smyer, TX

Isaac Ellwood, who made a fortune as one of the inventors and manufacturers of barbed wire, bought this vast South Plains range in 1889 from the veteran cattlemen D.H. and J.W. Snyder. Branded with the "Spade," the ranch was first stocked with calves from Ellwood's southern Renderbrook Spring holdings and eventually stretched fifty-four miles across several Panhandle counties before farmland sales moved its headquarters in the 1920s. Ellwood's descendants still own and operate it today.

Nacogdoches, TX

Standing on the Pedro Esparza Grant confirmed by Spain around 1810, this pioneer home belonged to Dr. John Marion Sparks, whose family reached Texas in 1832 and whose father Richard served as the last alcalde of Nacogdoches before the Texas Revolution. Built before 1851 and enlarged in 1884, the typical East Texas dwelling was moved to its present site for restoration in 1971.

Burkeville, TX

Spears Chapel was organized in 1839—when Texas was still an independent republic—by the Rev. Moses Spear, its first log meetinghouse rising on land owned by William McMahon. Its charter membership drew heavily on the family of the Rev. Henry Stephenson, who had founded the first permanent Methodist church in Texas at McMahan Chapel in 1834. Fire claimed the original building in 1883, and the present church dates to 1905, with services held here into 1939.

Los Indios, TX

On April 25, 1846, a company of U.S. dragoons under Captain Thornton was attacked by Mexican troops in the disputed territory north of the Rio Grande. The clash left several Americans dead and gave President Polk the claim that "American blood" had been shed "on American soil." Within weeks Congress declared war, and the skirmish here became the opening act of the Mexican-American War.

Panhandle, TX

In the mid-1880s the Niedringhaus brothers of St. Louis hauled lumber by ox-cart from Dodge City to raise this simple square house on their N Bar N Ranch in the Texas Panhandle. When the Southern Kansas Railway pushed toward Panhandle City in 1887, a railroad official lived here, and over the years bankers, ranchers, judges, and a sheriff called it home. Now the oldest house in town, it was restored in 1965 as the Carson County Museum.

Hale Center, TX

Before roads reached the South Plains, mail and news arrived by whatever route a contractor could lay off with a compass. Around 1890 that route fell to Stant Rhea, a small, red-haired man who drove wild Spanish mules on a 240-mile round trip between Amarillo and this area three times a week, carrying the mail for nineteen years. Six miles east he kept a mule corral and a dugout that doubled as a waiting room for passengers, until railroads finally rendered his stage line obsolete.

Galveston, TX

Completed in 1882 for the commission firm of Julius Kauffman and Julius Runge, this Renaissance Revival building rose during Galveston's heyday as the busiest port in Texas. Kauffman-Runge were reckoned among the world's foremost cotton exporters and pioneered coffee imports from Brazil, even helping bring settlers to Texas from abroad. In 1905 attorney Maco Stewart bought the building, redesigned it with a soaring skylit gallery, and founded Stewart Title Guaranty here in 1908 — a firm that grew into the largest of its kind in Texas.

San Antonio, TX

Erected in 1867, this San Antonio building housed the workshop of Diedrich Heye, a German-born master leather craftsman who made the saddles, bridles, and harness that outfitted the great age of Texas ranching and trail driving. Among his customers was Captain Richard King of the legendary King Ranch. A century later the building was restored in tribute to its history, its Victorian brick facade, arched windows, and native limestone walls preserved.

Windthorst, TX

Named for rock formations resembling teepees and once an Indian ceremonial ground, the Stone Houses gave their name to a sharp frontier clash on November 10, 1837. Lieutenant A. Van Benthousen and 18 Rangers, tracking stolen horses, were attacked nearby by a much larger Keechi force; ten Rangers and many warriors fell in a three-hour fight before the survivors escaped on foot. In 1874 the area's first permanent home was built close by the formations.

Stoneham, TX

Franklin Jarvis Greenwood, who came to Texas in 1829, donated the land for this burial ground, first called 'High Point' after a nearby settlement. Its earliest known graves hold two of his daughters, lost to cholera in 1856, and victims of yellow fever were specially marked to guard against the spread of epidemics. Many buried here descend from Stephen F. Austin's original colonists; the cemetery and town took the name 'Stoneham' after John H. Stoneham gave land for the railroad in 1879.

Waco, TX

James N. Harris built this refined Victorian residence in 1887, using bricks handmade from Brazos River sand throughout the house and even the servants' quarters. Its thirteen-inch solid walls carry plaster applied directly to the brick, and the roof remains original. In 1912 the Sturgis family bought the home and raised their children here, and their descendants have preserved it.

Sugar Land, TX

Sugar cane came to Fort Bend County with Stephen F. Austin's colonists in the 1820s, and by the 1840s the Williams brothers were boiling it in open kettles on Oakland Plantation. Successive owners — Kyle and Terry, then Cunningham after the Civil War, and finally Kempner and Eldridge in 1907 — grew a horse-powered mill into the Imperial Sugar Company, which named the town Sugar Land. One early partner, Benjamin Terry, raised the Confederate cavalry unit Terry's Texas Rangers and died in the war.

Burkesville, TX

Founded on land William Williams surveyed under an 1834 Mexican grant, 'The Survey' drew settlers who built the community's first frame house in 1847 from lumber hauled from Alexandria, Louisiana. Farming and later lumbering sustained the families named Booker, Mattox, Cobb, and others, and at least sixteen residents fought for the Confederacy. Shifting population after the 1940s consolidated the school, closed the post office, and disbanded the church, leaving cemeteries and old buildings tended by a local association.

Taylor, TX

Taylor's schooling grew from private academies in the late 1870s to the citizen-built Stock Company School in 1880, and a school for the town's Black children opened the very next year. An 1883 bond election funded a true public system under superintendent Augustus Hill, and after decades of growth and annexations, the Taylor Independent School District took control in 1950.

Ennis, TX

Built in 1867 for the Kirkpatrick Presbyterian Church, this Ellis County sanctuary later sheltered several congregations, serving as a Baptist church from 1909 to 1961. Its builders blended Greek Revival lines with High Victorian Italianate flourishes—shoulder architraves, paired cornice brackets, and six-over-six windows. A 1960 tornado tore it from its foundation, but it was stabilized and then fully restored to its historic appearance in 1986.

San Angelo, TX

After the Civil War, Congress authorized six regiments of Black soldiers, and in 1867 the Tenth Cavalry organized under Colonel Benjamin Grierson. Reassigned west to escape discrimination at Fort Leavenworth, the regiment reached Fort Concho in 1875, where its troopers endured grueling scouting and mapping expeditions across the high plains. They played a key role in the 1880 defeat of the Mescalero Apache leader Victorio before moving on to Fort Davis and, in later generations, service around the world.

Taylor, TX

House meetings led by a traveling minister in the 1890s gave rise in 1900 to a Swedish Methodist congregation in Taylor, one of many immigrant churches that let newcomers worship in their native tongue. The congregation bought a disbanded group's chapel, moved it to this site in 1911, and only shifted to English in regular services in 1935 as the community assimilated. Twenty-eight pastors have carried the church through name changes and remodelings across the twentieth century.

Navasota, TX

Elizabeth Owen had this two-story Navasota residence built in 1897 for her daughter Emmeline B. Terrell, recently widowed by the death of local pharmacist Joel W. Terrell II. In 1899 the home passed to John H. Mickleborough, a leading Navasota banker and businessman, and his wife Georgia. A well-preserved example of Queen Anne styling, it carries intricate Eastlake ornamentation across its gallery and gable ends.

Abilene, TX

Chartered by Congress in 1871 to reach the Pacific, the Texas & Pacific Railway pushed across West Texas in 1880 under railroad magnate Thomas A. Scott and engineer Grenville M. Dodge, the veteran builder of the Union Pacific. The first train reached Abilene in January 1881, and a station—housed at first in a boxcar—opened weeks later. To seed a town, railway agents auctioned 178 lots in March 1881 for over $27,000, launching what grew into the commercial center of central West Texas.

Belton, TX

At an 1841 meeting in Fayette County — during the days of the Republic of Texas — Union Baptist Association members organized the Texas Baptist Educational Society to coordinate schooling among the young republic's Baptists. Its first president, R.E.B. Baylor, and William M. Tryon secured a charter in 1845 for Baylor College at Independence. The society's female branch grew into the University of Mary Hardin-Baylor, which moved to Belton in 1886.

Texas City, TX

On the morning of April 16, 1947, a fire aboard the cargo ship Grandcamp, loaded with ammonium nitrate fertilizer bound for a recovering postwar Europe, drew crowds of spectators to the Texas City docks. At 9:12 a.m. the ship detonated with a force felt for miles, and a second explosion the next day destroyed still more. More than 550 people died, including 27 firemen, and thousands were injured by flying concrete, steel, and glass. The Red Cross led an immediate relief effort, and the tragedy drove sweeping reforms in industrial safety and emergency medicine.

Waco, TX

Fearing his prized library might burn, Dr. Kenneth Hazen Aynesworth — a Waco surgeon and avid collector — donated about a thousand volumes on Texas to Baylor University in 1923, then thousands more. His gift grew into the Texas Collection, a research center that also hosted one of the first college-level Texas history courses. Over the decades it moved through several campus buildings before gaining a purpose-built home.

Austin, TX

The Texas Federation of Women's Clubs, founded in 1897 to advance education and humanitarian causes, achieved its dream of a permanent state headquarters with this building in the early 1930s. Designed by prominent Dallas architect Henry Coke Knight, it is among the finest examples of Georgian Revival architecture in Texas, crowned by a dominant two-story central portico. The building anchored decades of statewide women's civic organizing.

Laredo, TX

Merchants in Corpus Christi dreamed as early as the 1850s of a railroad linking the Gulf Coast to the Rio Grande, hoping to make their port a center of trade. Funding shortfalls and economic downturns stalled the plan until 1875, when promoter Uriah Lott revived the effort that would grow into the Texas Mexican Railway. The line eventually connected Corpus Christi to Laredo, opening a vital commercial artery between the Texas coast and the Mexican border.

Waco, TX

The arrival of cheap barbed wire in the late 1870s collided head-on with Texas's tradition of free grazing on open public land. As farmers fenced their crops and drought-stricken ranchers lost cattle in the 1880s, fence-cutting erupted into a range war that the state criminalized in 1884. Governors dispatched the Texas Rangers, who went undercover to hunt the cutters across the whole sweep of Texas until stockmen finally embraced fencing and windmills of their own.

San Saba, TX

Isolated from courts and railroads, San Saba County in the mid-1800s spawned vigilante "mobs" that first promised protection and then curdled into a secret terror society. By the 1880s the shadowy San Saba Mob — organized like a fraternal lodge, complete with secret signs and midnight meetings at places like Buzzards' Water Hole — was ambushing settlers, leaving victims marked by nine bullet holes. In 1896 the state sent in the Texas Rangers under Sgt. W. J. L. Sullivan and later Capt. Bill McDonald, who paired with District Attorney W. C. Linden to move trials out of the county and finally break the Mob's grip by 1900.

Cleburne, TX

World War II transformed the Texas home front as civilians took up new jobs in petroleum, lumber, bomber manufacturing and farming, even as enlistment drained smaller towns of labor. Johnson County answered its 1944 farm-labor crisis by establishing Camp Cleburne, one of nearly 70 Texas camps holding more than 50,000 German POWs, whose workers supplied 120 local farms. Meanwhile National Guard units like Battery B of the 36th Infantry Division trained here before shipping overseas in 1942, and by war's end nearly 1.2 million troops had trained at Texas bases.

Mineola, TX

Irish immigrant Thomas Breen followed the Texas & Pacific Railroad to Mineola when it reached town in May 1873 and stayed on as its first ticket agent. He married Irish-born Lucy Wilson, opened a hardware store in the 1880s, and served for years as postmaster and later city alderman. Several of his twelve children carried on in civic life, and the Breen home long served as a meeting place for the town's early Catholic residents.

San Augustine, TX

Dr. Samuel Thompson and his wife Precious, with their grown sons, were among the earliest Anglo settlers of the San Augustine area, and Samuel served as alcalde before helping organize local churches and schools. Their sons stood at the center of Texas's founding drama: eldest son Burrell came with Stephen F. Austin's colonists in 1821 and joined the Fredonian Rebellion; others fought in the Texas Revolution, sat in the Convention of 1833, and served in the Republic of Texas Congress. One brother was murdered by horse thieves, another rode with a Ranger company, in the rough world of the frontier borderlands.

Hereford, TX

Built in 1906 on the developing plains of the Texas Panhandle, this Hereford home passed in 1908 to the Thompson family, where "Aunt Jennie" and "Aunt Jessie" nursed the sick and helped deliver babies until a hospital opened in 1924. The house doubled as a boarding place for judges, court reporters, students, and traveling preachers and singers. Its rooms held together much of the young town's social, medical, and religious life.

Jefferson, TX

Among the oldest homes in Jefferson, this house was begun around 1857 on land owned by "Major" P. M. Graham, a land dealer, surveyor, and the original clerk of Cass County. Merchant Theo Nichols bought it in 1859 and later gave it to his daughter, Mrs. Samuel Thurman, whose family kept a deer park nearby and lived here until 1906, lending the place its lasting name. Its long chain of owners traces the rise of Jefferson as an important antebellum riverport town.

Marble Falls, TX

The Nat Tobey family came from Indiana to Burnet County's Backbone Valley in the 1850s, and sons Avery and Samuel bought land here in 1868. When twelve-year-old N. W. Tobey died in 1872, this hillside became a cemetery serving the surrounding ranches and farms, near a church and school that anchored the little community. Over a century more than 200 graves were laid here, and in 1964 an association formed to preserve the last surviving landmark of a valley settlement.

Graham, TX

This West Texas valley carries the name of the Tonkawa nation, who called themselves "the most human of people" and were settled here on a state-authorized reservation in 1855 before being removed to Indian Territory in 1859. After the Civil War and the opening of the old reserve to settlers in 1873, pioneer families built livestock farms, a dirt-floored log schoolhouse, and rival Baptist and Methodist congregations. A schoolmistress once took a gray plow pony as part of her pay, and by the mid-20th century consolidation folded the little community's schools into nearby Graham.

Langtry, TX

In the 1870s and 80s brothers Cesario, Bernardo, and Juan Torres won prominence in West Texas for their irrigation work, and Bernardo's Val Verde County land was chosen as the route of the Galveston, Harrisburg & San Antonio railroad. After his death Cesario built the 7D Ranch and gave land for the rail line and depot. His son J.P. Torres, reportedly Langtry's first permanent resident, became Val Verde County's first Hispanic elected official, alternating as justice of the peace with his rival, the legendary Roy Bean.

Gause, TX

Alabama-born William J. Gause settled here in 1872 and, with friend Dan Fowler, hauled in lumber to build the settlement's first homes. When Gause donated right-of-way and a hundred acres to the International & Great Northern Railroad in 1873, the town was platted and boomed on cotton — gins, stores, a bank, hotels, and a newspaper crowding in around the depot. Better highways, mechanized farming, and the decline of railroading eventually stilled its commerce, though descendants and commuters keep the place alive.

Waelder, TX

When the Galveston, Harrisburg & San Antonio Railroad pushed through Gonzales County in 1876, the town of Waelder was laid out as a shipping point, and the thriving community of Hopkinsville simply moved down to the tracks to join it. The railroad named the town for its attorney, German-born lawyer and legislator Frederick Jacob Waelder. Its growth drew on the three great waves of German immigration that shaped nineteenth-century Texas.

Yoakum, TX

This memorial honors the cowboys who drove great herds of longhorns out of Southwest Texas between 1867 and 1887, the heyday of the long cattle drives north to railheads and open ranges. Yoakum sat squarely along the routes these trail drivers followed.

Liberty, TX

The Trinity River is the longest river lying wholly within Texas, known to Native peoples as the Arkikosa and Daycoa and named La Santísima Trinidad by Spanish explorer Alonso De León in 1690. Steamboats began working it in 1838, feeding a lively southeast-Texas trade — even a riverside meat-packing plant shipping to the West Indies — while Alabama-Coushatta boatmen carried Confederate supplies during the Civil War. In the 20th century, navigation and flood-control efforts culminated in the 1955 creation of the Trinity River Authority.

Trinidad, TX

Fed by its West, Elm, and East forks, the Trinity River has drawn people to its valley for thousands of years — the prehistoric Malakoff Man carved stone heads found nearby attest to habitation in the distant past, and Indian villages lined its banks when Europeans arrived. French explorer La Salle called it the River of Canoes in 1687, and the Spaniard Alonso de León gave it the name "Trinity" in 1690. Its fertile floodplain lured Republic-era settlers, and steamboats carried cotton, cattle, and lumber toward Galveston until the railroads arrived and ended the riverboat era, giving rise to towns like Trinidad.

Santa Anna, TX

Built in 1886 by a Mississippi attorney in a colonial style, this house was enlarged from eight to twelve rooms after rancher and oilman Fred W. Turner bought it in 1903. Under the Turners it became a gathering place for the social and business leaders of the Santa Anna area.

Marshall, TX

Merchant George Gammon Gregg built this frame house in Marshall in the early 1850s, and family tradition holds that Confederate veteran James Turner won title to it in an 1866 poker game. Turner went on to become a noted lawyer and served four years as the town's mayor, while his son Robert added the Victorian porch columns in 1890. The Turner family kept the residence for more than a century.

Yoakum, TX

German pioneers founded this Lavaca County congregation before 1845, meeting first in a log hut on Scarborough's Branch and worshiping in their native language as part of a German missions circuit. In 1855 Christoph and Christina Hornburg donated a two-acre site on Clark's Creek for a second log meeting house, and by 1889 a permanent church rose on new ground in the community aptly named Hope. Its membership reached about 100, and the Sunday School organized in 1892 has remained active ever since.

Amarillo, TX

Between 1838 and 1863 the small U.S. Army Topographical Corps—never more than 36 officers—mapped vast stretches of the American West, often through country held by peoples resisting their advance. Armed with barometer, compass, sextant, and pencil, they recorded climate, terrain, soils, and possible wagon and railroad routes. Three parties surveyed the future Potter County: Lt. James W. Abert along the Canadian River in 1845, Lt. James H. Simpson on a Fort Smith-to-Santa Fe rail route in 1849, and Lt. Amiel W. Whipple mapping a Mississippi-to-Pacific line in 1853.

Arlington, TX

The University of Texas at Arlington grew from a string of modest private schools and military academies, beginning with Arlington College in an 1895 frame building. It passed through Carlisle Military Academy, an Arlington Training School, and Arlington Military Academy before becoming a state institution in 1917 as Grubbs Vocational College, affiliated with Texas A&M. Through successive names — North Texas Agricultural College, Arlington State College — it joined the University of Texas System in 1965 and took its present name in 1967, growing into the System's second-largest university.

El Paso, TX

The University of Texas at El Paso began in 1913 as a State School of Mines and Metallurgy, founded to train engineers for the region's mining economy on land the citizens of El Paso donated near Fort Bliss. After a 1916 fire, it moved to its present site and rebuilt in a striking architectural style borrowed from Himalayan Bhutan. Over decades it grew from a mining college into Texas Western College and, by 1967, a full university offering doctoral degrees.

Nacogdoches, TX

Nacogdoches inherited a sense of scholarly duty from the Spanish friars of its mission, and prominent citizens like Sam Houston and Thomas J. Rusk championed learning. The Republic of Texas chartered Nacogdoches University in 1845, and townspeople gave money, land, and labor to build it, moving the school to Washington Square in 1858. Through Civil War hardship and changing hands among churches and colleges, the town's devotion to education persisted—culminating decades later in its successful campaign to win Stephen F. Austin State Normal College.

Uvalde, TX

The Uvalde Leader-News grew out of a tangle of frontier papers dating to 1879, consolidated by English immigrant Harry P. Hornby, who launched his Leader within weeks of arriving in 1898. Over the following century the paper championed local sons who rose to national office—John Nance Garner, who became Vice President, and Dolph Briscoe, who became governor of Texas. Under two generations of Hornby editors it stayed rooted in booster politics for enterprise, education, and conservation.

Victoria, TX

The Victoria Advocate began in 1846 as the weekly Texan Advocate, its first issue printed on May 8—the very day of the Battle of Palo Alto, the opening fight of the Mexican War—prompting a special extra edition. Founded by experienced newspapermen Thomas Sterne and John Davis Logan, it changed names several times before becoming the Victoria Advocate around 1859–61 and adding a daily edition in 1897. It is the second-oldest continuously operating newspaper in Texas.

Bertram, TX

South Gabriel took shape around a post office that opened in Thomas Lewiston's store in 1871, on the Austin-Burnet road and named for the nearby river. The little village — also called Lewiston — soon had two stores, a hotel, saloon, cotton gin, school, church, and a cluster of tradesmen's shops, with a population of thirty-nine in 1880. When the Austin and Northwestern Railroad passed to the north in 1882, the post office moved to the new town of Bertram and South Gabriel vanished.

New Braunfels, TX

This handsome Mansard-roofed house rose in 1870 on a lot first deeded in 1845 to Hermann Seele, a schoolmaster of the German colony at New Braunfels. Built by Dr. John P. Lehde, it has belonged since 1893 to the family of Gustav Voigt, including state legislator Frank B. Voigt. The home reflects the prosperity and permanence achieved by German immigrant families a generation after founding their Texas settlement.

Conroe, TX

Designed in 1933 by architect Blum E. Hester—also responsible for the Creighton Theatre—this Renaissance Revival residence was built for William Arthur "Bay" Evans and his wife Garnet. Evans was a prominent figure during Conroe's oil-boom years, running the Humble Oil bulk station and serving as a bank director, city councilman, and Chamber of Commerce president. The home reflects the prosperity that oil brought to the small East Texas city.

Daingerfield, TX

W. T. Connor opened a mercantile business in Daingerfield in 1866, and in the 1880s he and his contractor son T. C. Connor raised adjacent storehouses on this site. Over the decades the buildings sheltered doctors, merchants, and public agencies, passing in and out of family hands before being combined in 1974. They survive as rare working examples of Victorian commercial architecture in northeast Texas.

Waco, TX

Chartered in 1866 with a five-mile monopoly on crossings, the Waco Bridge Company spent four financially troubled years building this suspension bridge over the Brazos, finishing in 1870. It carried wagons, pedestrians, and vast cattle herds along the Chisholm Trail era's routes, charging tolls until public pressure and a 1889 sale finally made it a free bridge for the city of Waco.

Waco, TX

On the afternoon of May 11, 1953, one of the deadliest tornadoes in Texas history tore through downtown Waco, killing 114 people, destroying 346 buildings, and causing over $50 million in damage. The worst loss struck here, where 32 workers died when the R.T. Dennis Furniture Company building collapsed. Volunteers, military rescuers, and more than $9 million in donations poured in to dig out and rebuild the shattered city center.

Houston, TX

Confederate veteran J. P. Waldo settled in Houston after the Civil War, married into the family of railroad promoter Abram Gentry, and rose to become a prosperous railroad executive. In 1885 he built an elaborate Victorian mansion topped with a Mansard roof and tower at Rusk and Caroline; in 1905 his son Wilmer moved the house to this then-fashionable district, rebuilding it with much of its ornament stripped away. The Waldo family lived here until 1966.

Austin, TX

German-born Walter Tips came to America as a child in 1849 and, after Confederate service in the Civil War, took over his late brother's Austin hardware business in 1872. This handsome commercial block, designed by noted architect Jasper N. Preston and built in 1876–77, showcased Victorian Italianate style with Gothic touches, cast-iron interior columns, and an upper floor housing a Masonic lodge room and a 400-seat auditorium. Tips went on to the Texas Senate and helped found the Austin National Bank; his company occupied the building until 1927.

Wesley, TX

In 1864, Czech-Moravian immigrants who had settled the Texas prairie organized the first Brethren congregation in the state, with worshippers traveling as far as 20 miles to attend. Two years later they raised this church of hand-hewn logs, its foundation set with native rock and oak, using lumber hauled by ox-cart all the way from Galveston. Until about 1900 the building doubled as a school, the pastor often serving as teacher.