Historic Markers in Texas

Medicine Mound, TX

In 1937, the State of Texas and Hardeman County joined President Franklin Roosevelt's Works Progress Administration to provide work for the poor while replacing unsanitary privies with improved outhouses. Built fly-tight and sited away from water supplies, the new facilities helped curb typhoid fever, hookworm, and dysentery. One toilet stood behind the Hicks & Cobb store, later replaced by a privy moved from the property of town founder W. H. Bellamy's family.

Galveston, TX

On November 13, 1846, just months after Texas joined the Union, William Pitt Ballinger received the first law license the new state ever issued and founded the firm that would become the oldest continuous law practice in Texas. A veteran of the Mexican War and later a distinguished statesman, Ballinger built a Galveston practice carried on across four generations of his family. His son, grandson, and great-grandson each took their place in the firm's long line of descent.

Dallas, TX

Built in 1895 amid cultivated fields, this frame Victorian was home to William P. Cochran, son of a family that bought the land in 1851 and whose matriarch, Nancy Jane Cochran, had donated ground nearby for Cochran Chapel Methodist Church in 1856. The house sheltered Cochran, his wife Amanda, and their large family before passing to the adjacent church in 1964.

Vealmoor, TX

Iowa land promoter W. P. Soash came to Texas in 1905 to sell parcels of the vast XIT and Slaughter ranchlands, founding several towns and platting his namesake town of Soash in 1909. He brought trainloads of Eastern and Midwestern farmers to settle the arid plains, and for a time the town flourished on dreams of a railroad that never came. A four-year drought and the failure of his rail scheme doomed the settlement, leaving only the shell of a bank building to mark where a town once stood.

Kempner, TX

Farmer and orchard grower W. R. Hughes built this house in 1880 in an ornate "Old Plantation" style, complete with decorative gables, dormers, and fine glasswork. It survives as an example of the more elaborate rural homes raised by prospering agriculturalists in central Texas after the Civil War. The Lampasas County dwelling was recognized as a Recorded Texas Historic Landmark in 1966.

Greenville, TX

Built in 1914 for Greenville banker William R. J. Camp and his wife Dora, this two-story brick residence announced its owner's standing in the classical revival style then favored by the prosperous. Giant Ionic columns march across the front and cluster in threes beside the entry steps, complemented by a porte cochere and a stately second-floor balcony. The Camp family kept the home until the late 1920s.

Mount Pleasant, TX

Raised in 1855 as a classic dog-trot log cabin — two log pens joined by an open breezeway — this home was later refined with milled siding as frontier life grew more settled. Bought in 1870 by W. R. M. Slaughter, a Confederate veteran who served as county tax assessor and schoolteacher, it even did duty as the Greenhill community's post office before 1900. The single structure quietly served as dwelling, civic office, and communications hub for a rural neighborhood.

La Grange, TX

William Sion Robson came to Texas as an infant with his Georgia-born parents in 1852, settling first near Round Top before the family moved to La Grange in 1863. He rose from butcher to public servant, holding offices from tax assessor to deputy district clerk, and in 1880 he and his wife Lucy built the first section of this home. Robson became a lawyer and served three terms as Fayette County Judge beginning in 1890, and was a charter member of the Texas Bar Association.

Jefferson, TX

Built before 1850 in the thriving riverport town of Jefferson, this home was once the residence of B. J. Terry, who served as Grand Master of the Masonic Lodge of Texas. Dating to the early years of Texas statehood, it reflects the prominence of fraternal leaders in the civic life of a young frontier community.

Houston, TX

This 1912 Prairie-style home, designed by noted architects Birdsall Briscoe and Olle Lorehn, was built for lumber and real-estate magnate W. T. Carter, Jr., and his wife Lillie. Carter served on the Houston City Council and Port Commission and developed the city's first public airport, later William P. Hobby Airport; the family kept the house until 1978.

Houston, TX

Built in 1920 to designs by noted Houston architect Birdsall Briscoe, this Georgian Revival house drew timber magnate William T. Carter, Sr. and his wife Maude from their Main Street mansion to Courtlandt Place, where three of their grown children already lived in an unbroken row of family homes. Carter's fortune came from a large East Texas timber operation centered on Camden. The design blends Tudor and Classical Revival touches—gabled dormers, a slate roof, and Flemish-bond brickwork.

Dripping Springs, TX

Georgia-born William Thomas Chapman came to the Dripping Springs area after being wounded and captured in the Civil War, and by the 1870s had become the community's postmaster, stagecoach operator, and driving civic force. He gave land for a church, a Baptist congregation, and the Dripping Springs Academy, and in 1881 platted the town itself from his wife Martha's inherited acreage, naming the main street for their son. A merchant and Confederate-veterans organizer, he helped found Camp Ben McCulloch.

Gainesville, TX

William Thomas Green Weaver came to Texas as a boy in 1840, taught school, studied law, and by 1860 was district attorney for the 20th Judicial District. After Confederate service he resumed practice, and as a delegate to the 1875 Constitutional Convention he argued for a woman's right to vote — decades ahead of his time. He was also a published romantic poet read across the state.

Chappell Hill, TX

William Westcoat Browning, a native of South Carolina, moved his family to Texas in the 1850s and had this Greek Revival plantation home built in 1856–58. Its false wood graining, widow's walk, and two-story porches show the architectural tastes early planters carried west from the older Southern states. The house stands as a refined example of that transplanted style at Chappell Hill.

Alpine, TX

Built in 1908 by local contractor William Daugherty for pioneer settler William Wallace Townsend, this cast-stone house is a fine turn-of-the-century residence in the far West Texas town of Alpine. Its paired front doors, shingled dormers, and Eastlake-influenced porch reflect the tastes of a settling frontier community, and later owner Allen H. Palmer lived here into the 1920s. An outside stair added before 1913 was later removed.

Georgetown, TX

Built in 1895 for merchant, alderman, and mayor William Y. Penn, this Georgetown home was one of several Victorian houses raised by the local Belford Lumber Co. In 1907 it became the residence of the presiding elder of the Methodist Church's Georgetown District, and over the following decades it passed to a druggist, a doctor, and other families. The house reflects the comfortable prosperity of a growing central Texas county seat.

Sweetwater, TX

At Avenger Field near Sweetwater, the Women's Airforce Service Pilots trained during World War II — the only coeducational military flying field in U.S. history. From 25,000 applicants, 1,830 were accepted and 1,074 earned their wings, flying 60 million miles for the Army Air Forces under director Jacqueline Cochran. Living under military discipline yet holding only civil-service status, WASPs ferried planes, towed gunnery targets, tested aircraft, and flew countless support missions; thirty-seven died in service.

Sweetwater, TX

From February 1943 to December 1944, Avenger Field trained the Women's Airforce Service Pilots, the first women to fly American military aircraft, freeing male pilots for combat overseas. Under director Jacqueline Cochran and General 'Hap' Arnold's program, more than a thousand of the 25,000 applicants earned their silver wings and went on to fly some sixty million miles of noncombat missions; thirty-seven died in service. Though they flew as civilians, the WASPs were later made eligible for reserve commissions—and the field itself finished its service as a missile base.

Lufkin, TX

W. C. Trout arrived in Lufkin in 1905 and joined Lufkin Foundry & Machine Co., steering the shop from equipment repair into manufacturing and sales. Already an inventor, in 1926 he patented a counter-balanced pumping unit that became a worldwide standard in the oil business. He eventually held more than 30 patents and served as company president from 1931 until his death in 1947, a stretch of major growth for the firm.

Palacios, TX

W. C. 'Billy' Williams, born in Matagorda County in 1854 to a Danish ship's carpenter and a German mother, grew up in a coastal 'Dutch Settlement' alongside his boyhood friend, the cowboy-author Charles Siringo. After venturing into the Spindletop-era oil boom, Williams came to Palacios in 1904 and in 1909 completed this 4,200-square-foot Romanesque brick building, which anchored downtown for decades as it housed a parade of hardware stores, groceries, and a doctor's office.

Fairfield, TX

Beginning in 1891, aging Confederate veterans of Freestone County gathered at these grounds for three-day reunions of speeches, music, and dances, opened each year by the firing of a Valverde cannon. Named for Col. William Lewis Moody, who raised a local company of the 7th Texas Infantry, the site drew as many as 8,000 attendees before the reunions ended in 1933 as the old soldiers passed away. In 1947 the Moody family dedicated the grounds as a memorial park to veterans of all American wars.

Granbury, TX

Established in 1894, the W.M. Miller Cemetery is one of the small family and community burial grounds that dot Hood County, and it carries the state's Historic Texas Cemetery designation awarded in 2008. Such late-19th-century graveyards took root as scattered farming families needed consecrated ground close to home. Its official recognition helps protect a modest but genuine link to the county's settlement era.

Odessa, TX

Built of steel and wood in 1948, W.T. Barrett Stadium rose after Odessa High School's 1946 state football championship, its stands designed to hold more than 17,000 fans. Nicknamed 'W.T.,' the arena packed in crowds nearing 20,000 for football, marching-band contests, and, after a cinder track was added in 1950, track meets that sent competitors on to the U.S. Olympic team. For more than three decades it was the largest stadium between Abilene and El Paso and a beating heart of West Texas community life until it was sold and moved to Leander in 1983.

Crockett, TX

Crockett native William Van McConnell built this Victorian commercial building soon after buying the site in 1891 from a former mayor. Known for his wit and his Irish stories, he opened a mercantile store that grew into a business lasting until 1973. For generations the McConnell Building stood as a familiar landmark on the town square.

Dallas, TX

When George W. Glover acquired this Dallas County land in 1844, Texas was barely a decade past its revolution and still a sparsely settled frontier. The ground became a burial place in 1857 with the interment of five-year-old Sarah Beeman, and Glover later deeded it to his son William Wald Glover, for whom the cemetery is named. More than seventy pioneer families rest here, including early civic leader Richard Lagow, in a community graveyard used until 1951.

Waco, TX

Founded in 1849 and named for the Waco Indians who had lived along the Brazos, the city grew from a frontier settlement into a hub of Central Texas. In the Civil War it sent men to both state frontier defense and the Confederate Army and counted five Confederate generals among its residents. Today it anchors the region as home to Baylor University, Paul Quinn College, and the Heart O'Texas Fair.

Waco, TX

Waco grew up around the great natural artesian springs that gave the city its water, and for much of the 19th century residents depended on private well suppliers. When those proved inadequate, the city issued bonds in 1901 for a municipal system, and by 1914 Waco had switched to Brazos River water pushed through the mains by two steam-driven Allis-Chalmers pumps housed in this complex. The pumps ran until 1967.

Waco, TX

Chartered in 1852 as Bosque Lodge and renamed in 1856, this Masonic lodge is the oldest organization in continuous existence in Waco. Devoted to benevolence, its rolls included three Texas governors — Richard Coke, Lawrence "Sul" Ross, and Pat M. Neff — spanning the decades from Reconstruction into the 20th century.

Waco, TX

Established by the Texas Legislature in 1919 and opened in 1922, the Waco State Home cared for dependent and neglected children on a hilltop campus that had been part of Camp MacArthur, a World War I army training ground. Brick dormitories, live-in houseparents, and a working farm sustained a population that neared 400 by the late 1930s, and until the mid-1950s the home ran its own independent school district. It closed in 1979 after schooling and raising hundreds of Texas children.

Waco, TX

This Waco landmark opened in 1914 as the Hippodrome, a two-story dark-brick house with classical detailing run by a group of local businessmen led by T.P. Finnegan. It hosted silent movies, touring vaudeville acts, and civic gatherings in the years when downtown theaters were the heart of a city's social life. After a minor fire in 1928 the building was enlarged and reworked in the Mediterranean Revival style, reopening in 1929 as the Waco Theatre.

Waco, TX

In 1861 Dr. Rufus C. Burleson (1823–1901) left the presidency of Baylor University at Independence to lead the Waco Classical School, founded in 1856 by the Rev. Solomon G. O'Bryan as the Trinity River Male High School. Renamed Waco University that same year, it grew under Burleson's tireless 25-year leadership into a leading Baptist college, topping 400 students by the early 1880s. In 1886 the Waco and Independence institutions merged to form Baylor University at Waco.

Trinity, TX

The line that became the Waco, Beaumont, Trinity & Sabine began in 1881 as a humble logging tram, the Trinity & Sabine Railway, and passed through the hands of the MKT and lumber magnate William Carlisle before Col. R. C. Duff bought it in 1924 with Trinity as its hub. Despite its grand name, it never reached Waco, Beaumont, or the Sabine—only Trinity, where it started. At its peak it ran 115 miles of hastily laid track through the piney woods, hauling timber, tomatoes, and later oil, and earned the affectionate nickname "Wobbly, Bobbly, Turnover and Stop" for its frequent derailments. Abandoned in 1961, its restored Engine #1 survives at the Galveston Railroad Museum.

Waco, TX

Waco began where a Native village once stood, the former home of the Waco Indians, when the first town lots sold in 1849 and Shapley Ross opened a ferry across the Brazos the next year. Ferry, then bridge in 1870, then railroad in 1872 turned the settlement into a cotton-trading powerhouse and, by 1900, one of Texas's great inland cotton ports. Baylor University arrived in 1886, three governors called the city home, and 20th-century military camps made Waco known far beyond Texas.

Odessa, TX

A few years after Odessa's founding in 1881, a squirrel is said to have buried a stolen pecan that sprouted into this tree, a green rarity in the dusty West Texas downtown. By the time the Waddell family moved to the adjoining home in 1926, neighbors were gathering to enjoy its native pecans. "Cotton" Waddell and his wife Mary Lee, part of a family influential in the region since the 1870s, let the tree shade the community as freely as they gave their time to civic life.

New Ulm, TX

F.B. Waddell built the front of this house around 1842, during the days of the Republic of Texas. German-born William Dudensing bought it in 1873 and enlarged it, and his family held it into the 1950s; a descendant of Germans who came to Texas in 1846 later restored the structure, which still bears its original stenciled staircase trim.

Houston, TX

Irish immigrant Hugh Waddell arrived in Houston in 1873 and by 1882 had built his own downtown retail business selling furniture, carpets, and household goods. His enterprise grew to fill multiple buildings, including this four-story masonry warehouse erected in 1912 and intended to be the largest in the city. Waddell's House Furnishing Company endured for more than a century before closing in 1988.

McKinney, TX

Kentucky-born Judge R.L. Waddill arrived in the young town of McKinney in 1853 with his stepson George S. Morris, buying land and putting down deep roots as the Collin County seat took shape. A circuit-riding district judge, Waddill also made an early gift to local education by building a schoolhouse in his own backyard and importing a teacher from West Virginia. The family's story stretches through the Civil War — Morris served in the Confederacy — and the home built after a fire remained in the family for over a century.

Morgan's Point, TX

Houston architect Joseph Finger designed this Spanish Colonial Revival summer home in 1927 for business leaders Wade and Mamie Irvin, who owned several companies and founded Citizens State Bank. Famous for lavish entertaining, the Irvins even kept a private zoo on the grounds. The house shows off stucco walls, a tile roof, decorative metalwork, and a Moorish arch motif.

Brookshire, TX

Wade Cemetery began in 1846 on the sprawling plantation of William Wade, a Mississippi planter who came to Texas in the 1820s and amassed over 11,000 acres of Republic of Texas land along the Brazos. His wife Hulda's grave is the oldest here; later generations—including a son who fought for the Confederacy—and neighbors from the Brookshire and Fulshear communities were laid to rest alongside the family.

Decatur, TX

The Reverend Henry Fullingim, a Georgia-born circuit-riding Methodist minister, brought his wife Martha and their seventeen children to northeast Texas in 1849. His son Archibald and son-in-law John Hale—who became Wise County's first sheriff in 1856—were among the county's earliest settlers. The cemetery took its name from John T. and Sarah Waggoner, on whose land Martha Fullingim's 1868 burial became the first recorded here.

Vernon, TX

Spottswood Lomax, a founder of the famed Matador and Espuela (Spur) ranches, built a Queen Anne house on this spot in 1890, at the height of the great Texas cattle empires. Around the turn of the century the prominent cattleman W. T. "Tom" Waggoner remodeled it in the Colonial Revival style and deeded it to his son, banker Guy Leslie Waggoner. In 1907 it passed to farmer and oil investor E. P. Hicks, whose family held it for sixty years — a chain of owners tracing the region's shift from cattle to banking to oil.

Jasper, TX

Salesman J.T. Waggoner Jr. and his wife Sadie built this Jasper home in 1927, blending colonial revival and bungalow touches with fanlights and elliptical arches. The house is best remembered for "Miss Sadie," a longtime county schoolteacher and civic leader whose influence shaped generations of local children. It later passed to her brother, businessman Philip Edgar Scarborough, keeping the family's mark on the community.

Fredonia, TX

This burial ground served the Blue Stretch settlement, which took the name Wagram when its post office opened in 1906. Established beside the community schoolhouse, its first marked grave holds three-month-old Marion Eaker Miller, who died in 1880, though rock-marked graves may be older still. Deeded to the community in 1897, it remains in use under a perpetual-care association.

Austin, TX

Built in 1867 in a plain Greek Revival style, this Austin house passed through the hands of German immigrant families and for a time housed the German-American Ladies College and other academies before becoming the Wahrenberger family home. Its boarders included future Texas Governor Pat Neff and future U.S. House Speaker Sam Rayburn during their student days. Successive remodelings—Victorian cornices, a Classical Revival portico—make the house a record of nineteenth-century architectural taste.

Fredericksburg, TX

Erected about 1876 in the German settlement of Fredericksburg, this building blended home and business: Elise Wahrmund ran a millinery and dressmaking shop in the front rooms of the family residence. Later it housed a boarding house under the Clarks, and from 1924 to 1966 a succession of German-descended bakers—Schult, Moellendorf, and the Dietz brothers—filled it with the smell of fresh bread.

Fredericksburg, TX

This stone house rose during the great wave of German immigration that gave the Texas Hill Country its distinctive character. Johann Christian Wahrmund brought his family to Texas in 1846 and settled along Bear Creek, where the original portion of the house was built between 1852 and 1866. Prussian immigrant Johann Priess bought the property in 1866, and his family enlarged and held it for another sixty-five years.

New Braunfels, TX

Chartered in 1848 as the Western Texas Orphan Asylum, this was, by tradition, the first orphanage in Texas—born of the deadly epidemics that left many German settler children with no family. Pastor Louis Ervendberg built a house and farm here and, with his wife, raised nineteen orphans alongside their own five children, teaching the children farming and housekeeping as well as their letters.

Fredericksburg, TX

Johan Joseph Walch was among the German immigrants who poured into the Texas Hill Country in the 1840s, part of the organized settlement that founded Fredericksburg in 1846. A stonemason by trade, Walch raised a two-room limestone house and a rock barn on this lot before marrying Wilhelmine Gaertner in 1851, building in the durable German fachwerk-and-stone tradition that still defines the town. Generations later, his son Felix converted the sturdy barn itself into a home.

Fayetteville, TX

For more than a century this Fayette County cemetery has served Waldeck, a community of German immigrants first known as Long Prairie. In 1866 the settlers gathered to build a combined school and church and to set aside a burial ground, with Louis Tittel deeding six acres for the purpose. Among its 530-plus graves lie generations of German-Texan families and veterans of every American war from the Civil War through Vietnam.

Ledbetter, TX

The German families of Waldeck—once called Long Prairie—were first served by German-speaking Methodist missionaries before organizing their own Lutheran congregation in 1899 under the Rev. August Wenzel. Meeting in the local schoolhouse until 1926, they then bought the sanctuary of a declining neighboring Methodist congregation at this site. Sunday school, picnics, and community services became part of a church life that continues today.

Silsbee, TX

As the railroad turned Silsbee into a busy mill town at the turn of the 20th century, Black settlers organized a school for their children, guided by Reverends J.R. Dunbar and W.H. Jermany. Under principal Waldo Mathews it grew from two teachers to eight, and in 1922 a new six-room building rose with help from the Julius Rosenwald Fund. By 1939 it was the only African American school in Hardin County to earn eleventh-grade classification, and Silsbee's schools integrated peacefully by 1967.

Carthage, TX

In the years after the Civil War, East Texas communities like this one in Panola County were still being knit together by the families who settled its piney woods. Local memory holds that the graveyard began in 1872 when a settler was laid to rest in a cedar grove she had admired, on land the Waldrop family later deeded to the community in 1885. As neighbors added parcels, it grew into a resting place for many of the area's pioneer families.

Bryan, TX

Built in the early 1900s to designs by the Houston firm Jones & Tabor, this home belonged to Allister Waldrop, a prominent Bryan retail merchant who also served as president of the city school board. Its American Four-Square form reflected the era's turn toward clean, simple design, dressed up with Palladian dormer windows and second-story wood shingles.

Weatherford, TX

On a bend of the Brazos River, this community took its name from W. J. Walker, who settled here in the 1860s, and by 1884 had its own school that served children until 1925. The nearby cemetery holds 24 recorded graves of pioneers and Walker family members, the oldest being W. J. Walker's infant son Thomas, buried in 1878. Long neglected, the burial ground was restored by the Abandoned Cemetery Association in 1993.

Lufkin, TX

The Red Land community, named for the red soil ridge at its heart, took shape after Thomas R. Walker arrived from North Carolina in 1846 and married Emily Briscoe. Walker served as county sheriff and judge and belonged to the local Masonic lodge, and when he died in 1877 he was buried in this graveyard that predated his purchase of the surrounding land. Deeds from his widow and neighbor J. W. Chamblee in 1892 enlarged the site into a community cemetery that still bears his name.

Huntsville, TX

Walker County was carved from Montgomery County in 1846, the year Texas joined the Union, and first honored Robert J. Walker of Mississippi, a leading advocate of annexation. In 1863 the county was pointedly rededicated to Captain Samuel H. Walker, the daring Texas Ranger who fell fighting in Mexico during the U.S.-Mexico War. Huntsville has served as its county seat throughout.

Huntsville, TX

Carved from Montgomery County in 1846, Walker County was first named for U.S. Senator Robert J. Walker, then rededicated to honor Samuel H. Walker, the Texas Ranger and Mexican War hero. Its seat, Huntsville, began as an Indian trading post and got its first courthouse in 1848; after fire destroyed a later one, the present courthouse rose in 1888. Today the county holds part of the Sam Houston National Forest and is home to Sam Houston State College, the oldest state-supported college in Texas.

Reklaw, TX

This cemetery grew from Walker's Chapel Methodist Episcopal Church, South, founded by John Walker, who reached this Cherokee County vicinity by 1839. Harvey N. Cooper deeded the church its site in 1879, and the congregation became the heart of a rural community that took the chapel's name. The oldest legible grave dates to 1879, and among the burials are veterans of conflicts reaching back to the Civil War. A memorial service still gathers here each July.

Cameron, TX

The Walkers Creek community took its name from W.H. Walker, who arrived in the 1830s, and grew as families like that of Tennessee native Richard W. Cage put down roots. In June 1884 the Cage family gave land for a cemetery, Baptist church, and school, though burials had begun here by 1880. The church later disbanded, but an association keeps the cemetery active as a link to the settlers who shaped the area.

Wall, TX

Wall Brethren Church began in the summer of 1929 when Czech-speaking Brethren families from Granger, Taylor, and Rowena resettled in this Tom Green County community, worshipping first in homes and then in a vacated Methodist church. Services and Sunday School were conducted in Czech until the Unity of the Brethren adopted English in 1947, and the growing congregation built successive churches from 1937 onward. Traditions such as the Christian Sisters baking and selling kolaches keep the church's Czech Moravian heritage alive.