Historic Markers in Texas

Mathis, TX

After the Coleman, Mathis, Fulton Cattle Company dissolved in 1879, Thomas Henry Mathis founded the 24,000-acre Henry Bend Ranch on a bend of the Nueces River, fencing thousands of acres with wooden planks and even raising prized polo ponies trained for buyers in England. Sensing the value of the railroad, he donated a right-of-way to the San Antonio & Aransas Pass line in 1887 and platted the fenced townsite of Mathis in 1889. The ranch headquarters near this site stood until 1953.

Call Junction, TX

Thomas Holmes helped steer Texas from colony to republic, serving as delegate for the Bevil municipality at the 1835 Consultation that set the Texas Revolution in motion. A decade later, as the frontier organized itself into counties, he became the first chief justice of newly formed Newton County in 1846.

Strawn, TX

Completed in 1919 for rancher Randal Burton Thomas, this Prairie School house — low, horizontal, with wide projecting eaves — was designed by a Dallas architect and built with wealth from the Ranger Oil Boom that began nearby in 1917. The Thomas family had been among the region's earliest settlers after the railroad reached West Texas around 1881, and the house was arranged with separate quarters for Thomas's mother, who had raised him running the family ranch.

Waco, TX

Born in Virginia in 1796, Thomas Hudson Barron fought at the Battle of New Orleans with the Kentucky Militia before joining the stream of settlers into Mexican Texas, appearing in Stephen F. Austin's 1831 registry of families. As a Ranger captain he oversaw the building of Fort Fisher on the Brazos in 1837 and became one of the earliest settlers of what would grow into Waco, later serving as the county's first court clerk. A street, a school, and a creek in the city still carry his name.

Corsicana, TX

Born in Virginia in 1800, Thomas Ingles Smith soldiered in the War of 1812 under his father before coming to Texas in 1836 to join the Republic's army. He was wounded at the Battle of the Salado in 1842 and figured in the "Archive War" when Austin residents blocked his Rangers from removing the Republic's records. A frontier Ranger, Indian scout, and treaty commissioner, he lent his name to Fort Smith and helped found Corsicana before his death in 1848.

Houston, TX

Thomas J. Donoghue, a founder and executive of the Texas Company (Texaco), and his wife Mary built this Georgian Revival house in 1915–16. Designed by the celebrated New York firm Warren and Wetmore with carvings by master artisan Peter Mansbendel, it stood in Houston's exclusive Courtlandt Place neighborhood and remained in the family until 1966.

Somerville, TX

Born in 1922 and schooled in Somerville, Thomas J. Gary, Jr., enlisted in the U.S. Navy at eighteen and was assigned to the USS California, flagship of the Pacific Fleet. When Japanese planes struck Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, Gary gave his life rescuing several crewmates and was lost at sea. Honored with the Purple Heart, Bronze Star, and a Navy Citation, he had two ships named for him, including the destroyer escort USS Thomas J. Gary.

Milford, TX

Thomas J. Jordan carried a rifle for the fledgling Texas Army in 1836, the year Texian forces won independence from Mexico at San Jacinto. Tennessee-born like so many who poured into the new republic, he lived out his days on the Blackland Prairie of Ellis County, where he and his wife Stacy are remembered side by side. Their joined dates trace a full pioneer lifetime spanning frontier Texas from revolution to the Gilded Age.

Liverpool, TX

Illinois-born Thomas Jefferson Callihan fought in the 1836 Battle of San Jacinto, the swift and decisive clash that won Texas its independence. He lived to 1880, and rests here alongside his German-born wife Johanne, whose life stretched into the 1920s.

Liberty, TX

This residence went up in the 1860s for Thomas Jefferson Chambers (1840–1929), a Virginia-born newspaper editor, Confederate veteran, and nephew of the Texas colonial leader of the same name. Over a long public life he served as state representative, justice of the peace, city councilman, and mayor. Known as the "octagon house" for its central chimney and unusual form, the home has since been reshaped by remodeling.

Jacksonville, TX

Thomas Jefferson Dean became pastor of Jacksonville's First Christian Church in 1909, four years before finishing his degree at Texas Christian University. Beyond the pulpit he helped found the town's public library and Boy Scout troop, later returned to farming, and in the 1940s ran the local Farm Security Administration office. As chamber of commerce manager he launched "Farm Family Days," a community fair that ran into the 1950s.

San Antonio, TX

Built between 1930 and 1932 to relieve overcrowding in San Antonio's high schools, Thomas Jefferson High School rose despite public grumbling over its cost — and quickly justified the expense. Designed by the firm of Adams and Adams around twin patios and a landmark tower, its Spanish Baroque entry, red tile roof, and wrought-iron balconies made it one of the most celebrated school buildings in the country, later appearing in magazines and films. It opened to 1,400 students in February 1932.

Nacogdoches, TX

Thomas Jefferson Rusk passed the bar at twenty-one and, drawn to Nacogdoches, threw himself into the Texas independence movement, signing the Declaration of Independence and serving as secretary of war. He fought beside Sam Houston at San Jacinto and briefly commanded the Republic's army, then helped bring Texas into the Union and served in the U.S. Senate, where he worked to fix the state's boundary and promote a transcontinental railroad. Grief-stricken after his wife's death, the ailing statesman took his own life in 1857.

Sherman, TX

Thomas Jefferson Shannon arrived in Texas in 1839, when it was still an independent republic, and settled in the area that became Grayson County in 1845. As the county's first state legislator he pushed to move the county seat to present-day Sherman and donated the land for the townsite, earning the nickname "Father of Sherman." A pioneering cattleman, he even imported Durham cattle said to be a gift from Queen Victoria in 1848, while his daughter Julia named the town's first streets.

Richmond, TX

Born in Virginia in 1808 and raised in Georgia, Thomas Jefferson Smith joined the fight for Texas independence in 1836, serving under James W. Fannin at Refugio. Captured at Goliad, he was spared to repair weapons for the Mexican army and escaped amid the confusion of the Battle of San Jacinto. He settled in Richmond after the war, running a blacksmith shop, hotel, and livery stable, and served as Fort Bend County sheriff in the 1850s.

Sweeny, TX

This marker honors Thomas Jefferson Sweeny, a Tennessee-born settler who fought at the Battle of San Jacinto, the decisive 1836 clash that won Texas its independence from Mexico. He lived out his years in the young Republic and early state of Texas, dying at La Grange in 1869. The State of Texas erected the marker in 1936 during the centennial of the revolution.

Hemphill, TX

Built around 1930, this Hemphill school was one of thousands across the rural South funded in part by the Rosenwald Fund, a partnership between Sears executive Julius Rosenwald and educator Booker T. Washington to build schools for African American children. Over the decades it grew into the Hemphill Colored School and later the Thomas Johnson School, adding a program to train returning WWII veterans and publishing its own yearbook, 'The Hawk.' In 1966 it integrated into the local district, closing a long chapter as the cornerstone of Black education in the county.

Austin, TX

Thomas Jones Hardeman came to Texas from Tennessee and helped govern the young republic and state, serving in the Second Congress of the Republic of Texas and later in the state legislature. He also acted as chief justice of Bastrop County and rose to lead the Masonic Grand Lodge of Texas in 1850. His grave marker records a life woven into the civic institutions of frontier Texas.

Galveston, TX

Thomas Miller Joseph (1823–1905) arrived in Galveston about 1841 as a young man from Hartford, Connecticut, and made the booming island city his home for the rest of his long life. Admitted to the bar, he rose as a Democratic Party leader, serving as county judge, state legislator, and senator, and raising eight children with his wife Mary. Fittingly for a place battered by hurricanes, his own grave may lie atop his mother's, its exact spot lost after storms swept the cemetery.

Caldwell, TX

Built in 1891 for merchant Thomas Kraitchar, Jr., this cypress-framed Victorian cottage shows the era's taste in its five-bay symmetrical facade and central gable. Beyond his store, Kraitchar served Burleson County as tax collector and sat as a Caldwell city alderman. The house stayed in his family for more than ninety years, until 1982.

Dallas, TX

Thomas L. Bradford built this home around 1907 at the height of Dallas's emergence as a Southwestern financial center. A Louisiana native who arrived in the 1890s, he rose through Southwestern Life Insurance to become chairman of the board and, briefly in 1931, mayor of Dallas. His 1929 gift for a newborn baby center helped seed what became Children's Medical Center of Dallas.

Diboll, TX

A Virginia native, Thomas Lewis Latane Temple moved to Texarkana in 1877 and in 1893 organized the Southern Pine Lumber Company, buying up timberland in Angelina County. In 1894 he founded the town of Diboll around his main sawmill, building an East Texas lumber empire. He became known for early conservation and reforestation practices and for his philanthropy toward his workers and their town.

Cuero, TX

Born in Florida and raised in Texas, Thomas M. Stell came up as a cowboy, driving cattle north to Kansas and Wyoming before studying at Covey College in Concrete. Elected sheriff of DeWitt County in 1892, he held the office fifteen years, relying on persuasiveness and tact — and once numbered the notorious gunman John Wesley Hardin among his prisoners. A member of the Old Trail Drivers Association, he served as president of the Texas Sheriffs Association.

Red Rock, TX

Thomas Osborn was one of the settlers-turned-soldiers who took up arms in the Texas Revolution of 1835–1836, the uprising that severed Mexican Texas from Mexico. The battles named here trace the war's arc: the early clash at Gonzales and the fight at Velasco, the grinding Siege of Bexar that drove Mexican forces from San Antonio, and the disastrous defeat at Coleto that led to the Goliad massacre. Texas erected the marker in 1962 to honor a veteran of that founding struggle.

Austin, TX

Thomas Pliney Plaster, born in Tennessee in 1804, helped work one of the celebrated "Twin Sisters" cannon at the Battle of San Jacinto, the artillery that pounded the Mexican line in Texas's decisive 1836 victory. He later served in the Mexican War of the 1840s. The State of Texas set this marker at his grave during the 1936 Centennial.

Lampasas, TX

Thomas Pratt served as a captain in the army of the Republic of Texas in 1836 and, decades later, in the Texas militia and Confederate service during the Civil War. In private life he farmed and ranched land in Coleman and Lampasas counties, and his wife Susan belonged to one of the first Anglo colonies in Texas. Remembered as a kindly man, he left funds in his will to provide meat for poor and reputable widows.

Leming, TX

Born in Missouri in 1824 and raised in Bastrop County, Thomas Ransdell Brite came of age amid the conflicts of early Texas. He volunteered against Mexican incursions in the 1842 Vasquez, Woll, and Somervell campaigns, served in the Mexican War under Captain McCulloch in 1846, and joined the Texas Rangers in 1855 to counter frontier raids. Settling in what became Atascosa County, he was elected its first tax assessor-collector and later county treasurer before his death in 1859.

Helena, TX

Princeton-educated Thomas Ruckman was drawn to Texas by cheap land and boundless opportunity, arriving in San Antonio on Christmas morning of 1850. He opened a trading post on the Old Ox-Cart Road between San Antonio and Goliad, then in 1852 laid out with partner Dr. L. S. Owings a new town they named Helena, which became the seat of Karnes County in 1854. For nearly forty years Ruckman served as its leading merchant, banker, and postmaster, and in 1872 he helped found the Helena Academy.

Corpus Christi, TX

Philadelphia-born Thomas S. Parker came to Texas at twenty, and in 1839 he and his parents received large land grants near present-day Corpus Christi, where they raised cattle. He allied with trader Henry L. Kinney, and when Zachary Taylor's army camped near Kinney's post in 1845 — the staging ground for the war with Mexico — Parker won the contract to supply the soldiers' beef. "Col. Tom" went on to become the first sheriff of Nueces County, later a Texas Ranger and Confederate soldier, and finally Corpus Christi's city marshal, shaping the young city's commerce and law until his death in 1886.

Denison, TX

Thomas Volney Munson settled in Denison in 1876 and built extensive nurseries, becoming one of the world's foremost authorities on grapes. When a root disease devastated France's vineyards, Munson's work with hardy American rootstock helped save them—an achievement that brought a French agriculture minister to his door and made him only the second American named to the French Legion of Honor. He built this brick Victorian home in 1887.

Alamo, TX

After the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ended the Mexican War in 1848 and set the Rio Grande as the international boundary, Major William Emory led a survey to map that new border. Thomas W. Jones, a young surveyor from Washington, D.C., joined the effort at El Paso in 1850 and worked as an assistant surveyor on the Lower Rio Grande. In July 1853 he drowned nearby and was buried on a local ranch, one of many who gave their lives to the exacting work of charting the frontier.

Houston, TX

An English baker's son from Somersetshire, T. W. House emigrated in 1835 and by 1838 had opened a bakery and confectionery in the young city of Houston. From that modest start he built one of Texas's great 19th-century business empires—general merchandise, cotton brokerage, banking, gas works, street railways, and railroads—served as a city alderman and, in 1862, as mayor of Houston, and held property in at least 63 counties plus a sugar plantation in Fort Bend County. His son Edward Mandell House would become the closest advisor to President Woodrow Wilson during World War I.

Houston, TX

T. W. House, Jr. (1846–1923) was the son of an English immigrant who founded the T.W. House Bank in 1838 and served as Houston's mayor. The younger House sat on the city council, ran three utility companies, and became sole proprietor of the family bank—until it collapsed in the national banking panic of 1907, forcing him into bankruptcy. President Woodrow Wilson named him Houston postmaster in 1913, an office he held here until 1922.

Lake Creek, TX

Thomas Wilson Stegall was born in North Carolina in 1832, served as a Confederate private late in the Civil War, and moved his large family through Tennessee and Mississippi before settling in Delta County, Texas, in 1873. A Baptist preacher remembered for his kindness—he once cut a gap in his prized rose hedge just to give a neighbor a shortcut—he built a blacksmith shop that became the gathering place at the heart of the new town of Lake Creek. From that community nucleus a town grew.

Nacogdoches, TX

A South Carolina native who came to Texas in its revolutionary days, Thomas Young Buford fought at the Battle of San Jacinto in 1836, the clash that secured Texas independence. He died young, in 1839, only a few years after the victory. The State of Texas honored his service with a marker in 1936.

Era, TX

When Dr. Benjamin Richard Thomason built this frame house in 1894, the little community of Era in Cooke County was still finding its footing on the North Texas prairie, and a country doctor doubled as one of the settlement's essential institutions. Lumber for the home and office was hauled overland from Gainesville by his son Robert Ewing Thomason, who went on to a long public life as a U.S. Congressman and federal judge. Its Victorian porch detailing and fine interior woodwork mark it as a place of standing in a young frontier town.

Thomaston, TX

Thomaston sprang up in 1872 as DeWitt County's first railroad town, absorbing the older 1848 settlement of Republic-era judge David Murphree. Named for legislator Nathan Thomas, who sold part of the townsite to the Gulf, Western Texas and Pacific Railroad, it drew a schoolteacher's cotton gin and grist mill, a first postmaster-merchant, and, at its peak, some 500 residents.

Thomaston, TX

When Thomaston became DeWitt County's first railroad town in 1872, John P. Wright donated much of the townsite—and, in 1886, land for its cemetery. Some 283 graves lie here, the earliest marked with wooden boards later replaced by concrete blocks, including that of an infant who died in 1871. Wright, his two wives, and veterans of the Civil War and both World Wars rest among them.

Beeville, TX

Grocer J.C. Thompson raised Beeville's first brick building on the courthouse square in 1892, using brick from the Calaveras kiln near Elmendorf. Its upstairs did remarkable duty over the years — the law office of Lon C. Hill, who would go on to found Harlingen, then the armory of the "Beeville Light Guard" militia. From 1912 it became the community's telephone exchange, serving as communications headquarters through the Bell era until 1957.

Bald Prairie, TX

Benjamin Rush Thompson left North Carolina for Milam County in 1841, when Texas was still an independent republic, and by the 1850s the census listed him as a Methodist clergyman and Mason. After moving his family to Robertson County, he set aside this ground as a family burial plot in 1873, following the death of his young son William. Of the thirteen graves here, only five bear inscribed stones; Thompson and his wife Margaret both lie among them.

Copeville, TX

Collin County pioneer Abner Thompson arrived about 1850 and set aside part of his land for a burial ground; fittingly, his own 1852 death brought its first grave, still marked by two weathered square stones. Nearby, bois d'arc posts have guarded an employee's grave for more than a century. As the Mount Pleasant Baptist congregation divided in the 1880s, its land passed to the cemetery, which grew to more than 800 graves and still draws neighbors from Lavon and Copeville to an annual Memorial Day service.

Forest, TX

Wiley and Cynthia Ann Thompson brought their children and a number of enslaved people from Alabama in 1847, buying a 636-acre tract along Larrison Creek and building a log home overlooking the bottomland. The community that grew nearby, called Forest, included a family-owned store, saloon, mills, and cotton gin. The cemetery began around 1850 with the burial of two of their children and holds more than thirty unmarked graves as well as veterans of the Civil War, World War I, World War II, Korea, and Vietnam.

Austin, TX

Painting contractor John W. Thompson and his wife Jennie built this Victorian home in the fashionable Robertson Hill neighborhood after their 1877 marriage, and their daughter Willie Mae lived in it until her death in 1966. The house then took on a new life: the Alpha Kappa Zeta Chapter of Zeta Phi Beta Sorority, a graduate chapter founded in 1940, acquired and restored it in 1967 as a meeting place. It became Austin's first Black Greek-letter house.

Westworth Village, TX

The cemetery began in 1870 when Captain Henry J. Thompson let his neighbor bury a young wife on his land, near the Allen log cabin. From that first grave it grew into the resting place of the pioneer families who built White Settlement, River Oaks and Westworth Village — among them James Ventioner, founder of River Oaks, and the Farmer brothers, first to raise homes in White Settlement. Confederate veterans, a wagon-train child whose name was spelled in pebbles, and generations of settlers lie together beneath its many names.

Sweet Home, TX

Rural schools were the main source of learning for Lavaca County children beyond the larger towns, and Thompson School owed its very existence to the railroad that drew a gin and store to the community once called Needmore. F. M. Thompson deeded land for the school, which opened in 1895 with Ruby Lay teaching children who walked across fields and helped maintain the building themselves. Through land reversions and rebuildings, the school carried on across three successive buildings until it consolidated with the Hallettsville district in 1959.

San Marcos, TX

In 1850 Dr. William Alexander Thompson struck an agreement with his neighbors to harness the San Marcos River, and he and his sons used enslaved laborers to build a gristmill, sawmill, and cotton gin. The channels dug for the waterwheel created the parcels known as "Thompson Islands." The family ran the mills until 1911, and the arrival of electricity in 1942 finally ended the site's dependence on water power.

San Marcos, TX

William A. Thompson moved his family and the people he enslaved from Louisiana to Texas in 1850, establishing plantations in Caldwell and Hays counties. Enslaved laborers built a mill on the San Marcos River whose construction reshaped the channel into three small islands still called Thompson's Islands. The mill powered local lumbering and a cotton gin, anchoring the area's antebellum economy for generations.

Groveton, TX

In 1858 James D. Thornton brought his family by wagon train from Mississippi to join friends and relatives already settled in Trinity County. The farming community they built centered on the Thornton Church and School, raised on land Thornton donated. Farming sustained the settlement until its population began to fade after World War II, and many of its pioneers rest in the church cemetery.

Thornton, TX

Founded by the Texas Central Railroad in 1871, Thornton quickly gained churches, businesses, and schools—most notably the Thornton Male and Female Institute, or Thornton College, opened in 1877 by physician-teacher Edward Coke Chambers. The school changed hands and merged before passing to the new Thornton Independent School District in 1891, and its buildings were repeatedly rebuilt after a storm and a fire, culminating in a brick schoolhouse in 1921. As rural districts consolidated and enrollment fell, Thornton merged with Groesbeck in 1965, deeding its campus to the city as a community center.

Granbury, TX

North Carolina native Patrick H. Thrash brought his family to the Granbury area in 1872 and became the town's first mayor, building a modest one-story frame home here around 1880. Over the following decades the house passed through the hands of a saloon owner, a district attorney, and the county sheriff, and was enlarged into the Queen Anne–style residence seen today. Its changing ownership reads like a roster of Granbury's early civic and business life.

Plainview, TX

Erected in 1906-07, this school opened in 1907 as Central Plains College and Conservatory of Music under the Nazarene Church, then passed to the Methodists, who renamed it Seth Ward College for Texas' first native-born Methodist bishop. Its 35-acre campus centered on a four-story, 27-room main building, but fires that consumed both dormitories and the main building forced the college to close in 1916.

Granbury vicinity, TX

This roadside marker points travelers three miles south to the grave of Elizabeth Crockett, widow of the frontiersman and Alamo martyr David Crockett. Left behind in Tennessee when David went to Texas, Elizabeth later claimed the land granted for his sacrifice and lived out her years in Texas, dying in 1860 at seventy-four. The marker keeps her memory, and her famous husband's, on the map of the Texas landscape.

McDade, TX

This burial ground began as a family plot—marked first by the graves of two young Goerlitz children—before Peter Kellermier deeded an acre for wider community use in 1893. Long tied to a neighboring Catholic church, it was known as the Catholic Cemetery until the congregation faded in the 1930s. Renamed Three Oaks in 1975 to honor all who rest here, including veterans of both World Wars, it still serves the McDade community.

Three Rivers, TX

Founded in March 1913 by Charles R. Tips, this South Texas townsite was first chartered as Hamiltonburg for a local family, with lots going on sale that Fourth of July. The following year the Post Office renamed it Three Rivers to mark the nearby meeting of the Nueces, Atascosa, and Frio rivers. Ranching and farming gave way, over time, to an economy also built on gas, oil, and recreation.

Burkburnett vicinity, TX

Springing up around 1919 amid the northwestern reaches of the Burkburnett oil boom, the tent town of "Newtown" or "Thrift" briefly boasted the area's only bank. Fire plagued the flimsy settlement — a 1920 blaze sparked by lightning striking an oil tank killed two and destroyed much of the town — and as the boom faded its population dwindled until, today, every building is gone.

Brownwood vicinity, TX

The community of Thrifty sprang up after the Army established Camp Colorado, a frontier defense post on Jim Ned Creek, in 1857. When troops withdrew as Texas seceded in 1861, settlers like the Mullins family faced the dangers of the frontier alone, but the area flourished after the Civil War with a hotel, gins, mills, and a mercantile store serving nearby farmers and ranchers. The railroad's bypass in 1886, paired with a hard drought, drained the town of its people and its purpose.

Throckmorton, TX

When Texas carved Throckmorton County out of the frontier in 1858, it borrowed the name of Dr. William Edward Throckmorton, a soldier of the American Revolution who had died in 1843. The honor carried a second weight: his son, James Webb Throckmorton, would sit in the governor's chair in 1866, during the fraught early days of Reconstruction. Formally organized only in 1879, the county reflects how slowly settlement and government followed the surveyor's line across West Texas.

Throckmorton, TX

Throckmorton County, named for pioneer physician William E. Throckmorton, was created in 1858 but not organized until 1879 as settlement finally reached this stretch of West Texas. Landowner F. E. Conrad donated the town square and built the first frame courthouse, replaced between 1890 and 1893 by a striking two-story Italianate building of quarried, polychrome sandstone. Topped by a mansard roof and square cupola, it gained a matching annex in 1938.

Thurber, TX

Thurber was Texas' most important coal town for three decades. After coal was 'discovered' here in 1886, the Texas and Pacific Coal Company built a bustling company town of 10,000 people whose mines fueled the state's railroads. Engineer William K. Gordon pushed daily output to 3,000 tons — and in 1917 helped discover the nearby Ranger oil field, an irony that helped doom coal as railroads switched to oil. The last mine closed in 1921 and Thurber emptied, though millions of tons of coal still lie underground.

Thurber, TX

The nine-acre Thurber Cemetery is a quiet ledger of the vanished coal-mining company town it served, laid out in separate Catholic, Protestant, and African American sections that mirror the community's many peoples. More than a thousand graves lie here, some seven hundred of them unmarked, the oldest an infant who died in 1890. That more than half the burials are children speaks to the epidemics—scarlet fever, typhoid, diphtheria, whooping cough—that stalked crowded industrial towns.