Historic Markers in Texas

Weches, TX

Daniel McLean and his brother-in-law John Sheridan were among the earliest Anglo settlers of this part of East Texas. McLean first came in 1813 with the Gutiérrez-Magee expedition seeking to free Mexico from Spain, then returned to claim land when Stephen F. Austin opened Texas to colonists in the 1820s. Both men were killed by Indians in 1837 while chasing stolen horses, and Mrs. Sheridan recovered their bodies with a boy's help so each could be buried on his own land.

Fairfield, TX

Moved by the plight of homeless and underprivileged children, Freestone County businessman J. B. Daniel and his family chartered this orphanage in 1947 on a sprawling 1,140-acre tract of hills, valleys, and creeks. He repurposed surplus military barracks from nearby Camp Fannin and an Army chapel from Oklahoma, and the home flourished, sheltering sixty-five children by 1950 under policies of regular worship and keeping siblings together. Deeded to the Assemblies of God in 1970, it continues today as the Pleasant Hill Children's Home.

San Angelo, TX

Daniel Millar reached Texas in 1831, during the last years of Mexican rule, and joined the fight for Texas independence. As a member of Captain William J.E. Heard's company of citizen-soldiers, he stood on the field at the Battle of San Jacinto in 1836, the swift and decisive clash that won the Republic of Texas its freedom. He lived on until 1894, and the state raised this marker to his memory in 1956.

Arcola, TX

Born in Mississippi in 1791, Daniel Perry brought his family to Texas in 1832 and settled on land along the Brazos as Anglo colonization spread through Stephen F. Austin's grants. He served as a captain and recruiter in the Texas Army, fought at San Jacinto in 1836, and then joined the Republic of Texas Navy before signing the 1837 petition that created Fort Bend County. A rancher and farmer who ran cattle under the "7P" brand, he died in 1869 and was buried at Duke Cemetery.

Stephenville vicinity, TX

Daniel Roberts Thornton, from Mississippi, married Mary Anna Garland—daughter of a frontier fighter—and the couple settled in Erath County in 1857 to raise cattle on a still-dangerous frontier. Mary Anna served as midwife and doctor to her neighbors while the family reared eight children; Thornton later fought for the Confederacy, served as county commissioner, and donated land for a school and the Hannibal Cemetery. Their lives trace the arc from open range to settled community.

Austin, TX

Daniel Shipman took part in the earliest sparks of the Texas Revolution, joining the 1832 disturbance at Anahuac and the storming and capture of Bexar in December 1835. Born in North Carolina, he was among the settlers who turned frontier grievances into open rebellion against Mexican rule. His grave records a life bound up with the birth of the Texas Republic.

Irving, TX

Mississippi-born Daniel Webster Gilbert came to Texas in 1874 and, after earning his medical degree in Missouri, practiced in the small communities around Dallas County. He farmed 1,500 acres at Sowers—planting a peach orchard and running a dairy—before settling in Irving in 1903 as one of its first physicians and a civic leader. He is buried here among his family.

Granbury, TX

Granbury merchant and saloonkeeper Robert Randolph Daniel had this house built about 1892, and in 1899 sold it to Wesley Smith Harris, a prominent local furniture dealer and undertaker. With its ornate square tower and intricate detailing, the residence blends Italianate and Eastlake influences, a fine example of the elegant homes that graced Granbury at the turn of the century.

Kennard, TX

Isaac 'Ike' Daniel was a leading figure in turn-of-the-century Houston County—sheriff, state legislator, and owner of a general store, gristmill, cotton gin, and sawmill—who even helped string a telephone line from Crockett to Coltharp. In 1905 he built this early Victorian farmhouse from pine milled at the nearby 4C Mill, living here until 1909. The Merriwether family bought it in 1912 and made it home for more than fifty years, preserving its gingerbread trim and outbuildings.

Sherman, TX

Trained in mortuary science in Chicago, John C. Dannel bought the Sherman Undertaking Company and by 1913 had moved his parlor to the courthouse square. When he introduced the area's first motorized hearse in 1917, the local livery stable sued him—a public feud he ultimately won in the newspapers and the courts. In 1923 he commissioned one of the region's earliest purpose-built funeral homes, and the business carried on through four generations of the Dannel family.

Kilgore, TX

Settled around 1847 and named for Danville, Kentucky, this crossroads community drew families from across the Southeast to a spot near old Bighead Village, a Nadaco Indian site. With a Presbyterian church, a Masonic lodge, stores, and a cotton gin, Danville thrived through the Civil War era—until the International-Great Northern Railroad bypassed it in the 1870s and its people drifted to the new town of Kilgore along the tracks. It remains one of the oldest settlements in what became Gregg County.

Houston, TX

Kentucky-born Darius Gregg reached Texas in 1827 and received a land grant in Stephen F. Austin's second colony. He took up arms in the 1835 Siege of Bexar, including the famous Grass Fight, during the Texas struggle for independence. Later a surveyor in and around Houston—working for the Buffalo Bayou, Brazos & Colorado Railroad—he held land across several counties and gave to Methodist causes, with Gregg Chapel named in his honor.

Grapeland, TX

Illinois-born Darius H. Edens came to Texas in 1831 and served in Thomas J. Rusk's infantry during the 1836 revolution that won Texas its independence. A surveyor, he helped plat the town of Palestine and became Anderson County's first Chief Justice before chasing the 1849 California gold rush. Returning home, he and his wife Nancy Rice ran the stagecoach station and inn at Augusta on the road between Rusk and Crockett.

Darrouzett, TX

Darrouzett began in 1917 as a station on the Panhandle and Santa Fe Railway, first called Lourwood and then renamed by the railroad for a Galveston legislator. By its 1920 incorporation more than four hundred people lived there, supporting stores, a school, two churches, and a post office. When the community finally opened its own cemetery in 1939, families reinterred loved ones from older graveyards, and its ground now holds many veterans, including two men killed in Vietnam.

Victoria, TX

Darwin M. Stapp took up arms in the Texas War for Independence, taking part in the 1835 Siege of Bexar that drove Mexican forces from San Antonio in the opening months of the revolution. The State of Texas raised this marker in 1962 to honor his service. He belongs to the generation of volunteers whose fighting won the Republic of Texas its independence.

Houston, TX

On November 6, 1891, seventeen women gathered at Mrs. Andrew Briscoe's Houston home to form an auxiliary to the Texas Veterans Association, electing Mrs. Anson Jones president and soon renaming themselves the Daughters of the Republic of Texas. Their aims—honoring Texas Revolution heroes, teaching patriotism, and preserving historic sites—drove a long record of preservation work. Members such as Clara Driscoll famously wrote personal checks to save the Alamo, while the group also protected the San Jacinto Battlefield and Austin's old General Land Office and French Legation.

Cuero, TX

Founded in 1892 as a one-room wooden schoolhouse, Cuero Colored High School was the town's first school for Black children, drawing pupils from farm families who could attend only when field work allowed. Principal Eugene Daule guided Black education in DeWitt County for four decades, stretching meager, unequal resources as far as they would go; the school was renamed in his honor in 1937. Under later leaders it built a celebrated band and a broad curriculum before closing in 1965 when Cuero's schools finally integrated.

Selma, TX

William Davenport, Virginia-born and Kentucky-raised, settled south of Cibolo Creek in 1851, and when his first wife died the next year he buried her near their home, founding this community graveyard. A rancher, militia captain, and Mason, he helped establish Selma's first school in 1859 and a combined schoolhouse-church-Masonic hall in 1872; his second wife's father was a War of 1812 veteran also buried here, and burials continued until 1934.

Wichita Falls, TX

In 1926, at the height of the North Texas oil boom, Rall and Ora Davenport turned the front of their Wichita Falls home into a neighborhood grocery serving oil-field hands and railroad men. Generations later the store still stands, its original hardwood floors, counter, and decades-old oak butcher block intact, and it remains famous locally as the 'home of the hot links.'

Houston, TX

This American Foursquare house was built in 1910 for David Barker, a business, civic, and political leader who was then serving as mayor of Houston Heights. Its wraparound porch with Tuscan columns, denticulated cornice, and transom-and-sidelight entry mark it as a fine example of the style. The Barker family kept the home until 1971.

Gonzales, TX

David Burkett came to Texas with his family in 1830 as a member of Green DeWitt's colony and took up the cause of Texas independence as a citizen soldier. In 1836 he served as a guard for the women and children fleeing Gonzales ahead of Santa Anna's advancing army — the desperate flight remembered as the Runaway Scrape. He is buried on his 4,428-acre land grant that once stretched south from this site.

Lumberton, TX

Born in Louisiana in 1811, David Choate Jr. joined a company of Beaumont volunteers and fought at the Battle of San Jacinto in 1836, earning land bounties that he settled along Pine Island Bayou. There in 1856 he founded Concord, a steamboat shipping point whose busy ferry linked Beaumont to points north and drew farm goods and lumber from three counties. At its peak Concord held 300 residents—but when railroads reached the region, the steamboats fell silent and the town was abandoned by 1880.

Webberville, TX

David Crawford Edmiston came to Texas as a boy in 1835 and spent his life on its contested frontier—riding with the Texas Rangers in frontier defense, again during the Mexican War, and serving in the Confederate army during the Civil War. He and his wife Rhoda raised eleven children on their Webberville farm, whose surviving buildings still mark the land the family worked.

Colmesneil, TX

David Curlee Enloe raised this house in 1852 and brought his bride home the following spring, settling into a life at the center of young Tyler County. A teacher and trustee of Woodville College, he was elected sheriff in 1853 and ran a sawmill that cut the lumber for the county's first courthouse. His work touched education, law, and the very buildings of the new county seat.

Clarksville, TX

Born in New Jersey in 1788, David Gouverneur Burnet became a leading figure in Texas's fight for nationhood. He served as a convention delegate and judge before becoming interim president of the Republic of Texas from March to October 1836, in the tumultuous months surrounding independence. He later served as vice president and secretary of state of the young republic.

Jacksonville, TX

David Greene Templeton, a North Carolina native, reached newly organized Cherokee County soon after 1846 and settled in the Gum Creek community that became Old Jacksonville. He grew into a prominent landowner and civic leader, was named in 1850 one of the original trustees of the Presbyterian college at Larissa, and served in the Confederate home guard during the Civil War. His descendants went on to play a prominent role in the early growth of Jacksonville.

Houston, TX

David Grieves was a Scottish immigrant who cast his lot with the Texas struggle for independence, serving in Captain Henry Teal's company at the Battle of San Jacinto in 1836. That short, decisive fight secured Texas's break from Mexico. Grieves lived only briefly afterward, dying in the raw new town of Houston in 1837.

Circleville, TX

David McFadin, a Tennessean who came to Texas in 1828 and fought at the Battle of San Jacinto, built this sturdy house in 1850 with native stone walls more than two feet thick. Its cool, never-failing spring later drew Confederate soldiers who camped here on their way to the Civil War.

Fairfield, TX

David Hall Love (1816–1866), a Tennessee native, fought in the Texas War for Independence and, at the Battle of San Jacinto in April 1836, helped capture a large body of enemy soldiers before carrying word of the Texan victory on foot to Harrisburg. For his service he received a bounty land grant, and from that land he later donated the townsite of Fairfield. He went on to serve his church and community as a precinct justice.

Circleville, TX

This marker honors David Hutcheson McFadin, who took up arms in the Texas War for Independence and fought as a soldier at the Battle of San Jacinto. That decisive 1836 clash, where Texian forces routed the Mexican army in less than twenty minutes, secured Texas independence and made men like McFadin part of the founding generation of the Republic. The State of Texas erected the memorial in 1962 to keep his service in public memory.

San Antonio, TX

In 1904, as San Antonio was booming into a modern city, the prominent architect Atlee B. Ayres designed this stately Classical Revival house for the Woodward family. May Bock Woodward worked closely with Ayres on the plans while her husband David served as builder — a rare instance of a woman shaping a major residential commission of the era. After David's death, May sold the home in 1926 to the Woman's Club of San Antonio, giving it a second life as a center of women's civic life.

Gonzales, TX

David L. Kokernot served the Texas cause during the war for independence from Mexico in 1835–36, acting as a soldier, officer, scout, and courier. This monument, erected by the State of Texas in 1962, honors his part in the revolution that created the Republic of Texas.

Granbury, TX

David Lee Nutt came to Texas from Missouri in 1857 and, in 1879, built this two-story plantation-style house of cypress lumber hauled by ox cart from East Texas. It soon became Hood County's first hotel — wryly dubbed "The Nutt House" — putting up the traveling salesmen, or "drummers," who called on Nutt's mercantile store, before reverting to a family home in 1900. Nutt also gave 40 acres for the original Granbury townsite.

Georgetown, TX

South Carolina native David M. Love came to Williamson County as an early farmer and rancher before moving to Georgetown in the 1860s. A leading local merchant, he had this ornate Victorian commercial building raised in the mid-1880s for his mercantile trade. Its pressed-metal upper façade, square pilasters, and decorative cornice typify the confident storefront architecture of a growing Central Texas county seat.

Farmers Branch, TX

Born in Kentucky in 1797 to a Virginia family that had pushed west a generation before, David Myers became an ordained Baptist preacher in Illinois before the lure of free land carried him and three generations of his family across the Red River on Christmas Eve, 1845. Settling on a Peters Colony grant northwest of Dallas, he organized Union Baptist Church in May 1846 — the oldest continuing Baptist congregation in Dallas County — and helped plant several more before pneumonia took him after a cold ride home from preaching.

Houston, TX

David Porter Richardson served as private secretary to Sam Houston, the towering figure who led Texas to independence and became president of the new republic. Richardson died in Houston in August 1837, in the earliest days of the Republic of Texas. His close service placed him at the very center of the young nation's founding government.

Corsicana, TX

David Reed Mitchell, a North Carolina–born surveyor, arrived in Texas in 1845 having already mapped the upper Trinity and Brazos country. As surveyor of the Robertson County Land District, he laid out portions of the Mercer and Peters colonies and the original plans of Navarro County and Corsicana. With partners Thomas I. Smith and James C. Neill, he donated the hundred acres on which Corsicana was founded, ran an early inn there, and remained until his death in 1853 — the only one of the three founding donors buried in the town.

Orange, TX

David Robert Wingate moved his family from Mississippi to a large East Texas cotton plantation in 1852, having built his fortune in sawmilling. During the Civil War he supplied lumber from his Sabine Pass mill to build Fort Sabine and other Confederate posts, and Federal troops burned his home and business in retaliation. Undeterred, he rebuilt in Orange after the war, invested in a sawmill, took up rice farming, and served as county judge.

Shelby, TX

David Shelby, born in Pennsylvania in 1799, came to Texas in 1822 as part of Stephen F. Austin's first colony—the "Old Three Hundred" families who founded Anglo-American settlement in what was then Mexican Texas. His arrival at the very start of that colonization effort links him to the earliest wave of pioneers whose community later took his name. The State of Texas erected this marker in 1936 during the state's centennial commemorations.

Waco, TX

David Smith Kornegay was a soldier of the Texas Revolution who fought at the decisive Battle of San Jacinto in 1836 and later escaped the deadly Dawson Massacre of 1842. Born in North Carolina in 1810, he came to Texas in its founding struggle and died in 1856. The State of Texas erected this marker in 1936 during the centennial of independence.

Longview, TX

Born in Virginia in 1869, David Sutton Meredith settled in Longview in 1895 and was elected sheriff of Gregg County in 1916. He served through the volatile summer of 1919, when he helped keep racial violence from erupting into full-scale riot during Longview's chapter of the nationwide "Red Summer." After leaving office he remained an influential figure, helping organize two of the city's national banks.

Longview, TX

Born in Longview in 1902, David Sutton Meredith, Jr. graduated from the University of Texas and returned home to practice law, winning election as Gregg County judge the same year, 1926. As a special district judge in the 1930s he prosecuted "hot oil" violators who illegally overproduced from the East Texas field. He volunteered for military service in World War II and served again in the early 1950s before rising to Texas Assistant Attorney General.

Barry, TX

David Wilson Campbell left Georgia for a still-young, still-contested Texas in 1835, arriving just as the fight for independence from Mexico was breaking open. He shouldered a musket with the Texas army in 1836, then traded soldiering for the plow, breaking ground as one of Navarro County's early farmers. In 1845 he deeded ten acres to the Harmony Methodist Church, and a corner of that gift became the family cemetery where generations of Campbells now rest.

Gatesville, TX

Matt Davidson came from Tennessee to the Milam-era Texas frontier in 1852, married one of Coryell County's first couples, and after Confederate service built a log home on Coryell Creek. Land overlooking his homestead became the community burial ground, its earliest marked grave dating to 1862. Around it grew a whole settlement—schools, a post office, churches, and stores—and its more than 600 graves hold veterans of every war from the Civil War through Vietnam.

Corsicana, TX

William and Jane Davidson brought their family from Mississippi to Texas in 1851, settling by the late 1850s on hundreds of acres in southeastern Navarro County. The Davidsons prospered as sheep farmers and ranchers in cattle country—earning the nickname "Grangers" for their likely ties to the farmers' fraternal order—while two sons rode off to serve in the 20th Texas Cavalry during the Civil War. Set aside in 1861, this fenced family plot with its stone obelisks holds the graves of the pioneer parents and several of their descendants.

Galveston, TX

Built in the years just after the Civil War by Norwegian immigrant and early Galveston settler Captain John Davidson, this house passed through a remarkable line of owners. Among them was Samuel Moore Penland, a grandnephew of Sam Houston who served in Galveston during the Civil War, became a businessman and customs official, and donated Houston artifacts and letters to the Rosenberg Library. Having survived the 1885 fire and the 1900 storm, the Greek Revival house is among the oldest of its kind in the East End district.

Davilla, TX

This congregation traces its roots to 1866, when a presbytery gathered at Mumford Springs to organize a Missionary Baptist church in what is now Davilla. After borrowing the Methodist meeting house, the members bought a town lot and raised their own sanctuary in 1871, baptizing early converts in nearby creeks. Known as Davilla Baptist Church since 1904, the congregation worshipped in that original building for 121 years before dedicating a new sanctuary in 1992.

Austin, TX

George W. Davis brought his family to Texas in 1835, on the eve of revolution. He fought in Captain Mosely Baker's company at the Battle of San Jacinto while his wife Emiline sheltered their children on the Sabine River during the Runaway Scrape. Davis received a large land patent in 1841 and built a home near this burial ground, which holds Davis family members and neighbors and is still cared for by descendants.

Grapeland, TX

Established around 1862, this Houston County burial ground took root in the heart of the Civil War, when East Texas was a Confederate homefront far from the fighting but bound up in its losses. Set among the farms and pine woods of Grapeland, it reflects the settlement of the region by families who had pushed into East Texas in the antebellum decades. Its Historic Texas Cemetery designation preserves that link to the war years.

Jasper, TX

This cemetery lies within the 1280-acre grant given to Elizabeth Davis in 1841; believed to be of Indian heritage, she had brought her three children from Georgia to Jasper County in 1836. Local tradition holds that a sick Indian child she took in was the first buried here, though the oldest marked grave is that of Elizabeth Davis Kelly, who died in 1873. Once a family plot, the ground opened to the wider community as sawmills and logging arrived, and it now holds more than 370 graves, including citizens of the Republic of Texas and Civil War veterans.

Larue, TX

Named for the pioneering Davis family, who reached Henderson County before the Civil War, this graveyard has served its rural corner since the mid-1800s on land deeded by J.J. Deupree in 1883. It is closely tied to the Baxter community, which became a station on the Texas and New Orleans Railroad by 1901 and soon had stores, churches, cotton gins, and a school. Among those buried here are a county sheriff, a county chief justice reinterred from an earlier grave, and veterans of conflicts reaching back to the Civil War.

Independence, TX

The Davis family were renowned educators whose roots ran back to the Rev. Abner Davis, founder of Shurtleff College in Illinois. Drawn to Texas by Baylor Female College, daughter Martha and her husband joined its staff in 1851, and in the following years much of the extended family followed to devote their talents to Baylor at Independence. One daughter, "Little Mary," even taught among Indians briefly before turning to the college.

Sweetwater, TX

Walter Wright Davis and his wife Florence built this Sweetwater home in 1916, its design caught midway between the craftsman bungalow and the Colonial Revival. Exposed rafter ends, knee braces, and divided-light window sashes mark it as typical of 1920s domestic building. A 1927 remodeling added twin dormers and traded the original broad porch for a small entry.

McKinney, TX

John N. Davis, a traveling buggy salesman, and his wife Maggie (Hamilton) built this L-plan vernacular house in 1902, where all seven of their children were born—though only three reached adulthood. After Maggie's death in 1908, her mother Cornelia Allen Hamilton moved in to help raise the family. The home, with its front bay and wraparound porch, stayed in the Davis family until 1978.

Gainesville, TX

This ornate Queen Anne residence, built in 1891, was the home of William O. Davis — a Civil War veteran who came to Texas in 1870 and rose from a self-educated background to become a prominent Gainesville attorney, state senator, and the town's first mayor. Its gingerbread trim and decorative brickwork advertised Davis's standing among the community's early leaders during the flush years of the Gilded Age. The house was recorded as a Texas Historic Landmark in 1982.

McKinney, TX

Built between 1897 and 1908 for Judge Harvey Louis Davis and his wife Emma, this Transitional-style McKinney residence mixes Prairie-influenced and Classical detailing, from a Sullivanesque frieze to fluted Corinthian porch columns. The Davis family was steeped in public life, counting two county judges, a district attorney, a county commissioner, a postmaster, and a schoolteacher among its members. Across three generations who lived here for ninety-one years, the family gave Collin County a cumulative ninety-five years of public service.

Montgomery, TX

This modest frame building went up in 1845, the year Texas joined the Union, as the law office and home of Judge Nat Hart Davis, who trained a generation of young attorneys reading law under his supervision here. From 1848 to 1854 it doubled as the meeting place for Montgomery's mayor and city council, and over the decades it served as a school and later a U.S. Post Office from 1923 to 1936. Today it stands as one of the last tangible reminders of Montgomery's earliest days.

Salado, TX

William A. Davis built this mill in 1864, the first stone mill with a carding machine in the Salado vicinity, and added a sawmill and gin two years later. In 1871 he hauled French burr millstones, a Leffel water wheel, and silk bolting cloth in by wagon from Galveston to grind flour for Central Texas households. A local point of pride was recorded on the marker itself: no widow ever paid a toll to grind her grain at the Davis Mill.

New York, TX

In 1856, Davis Reynolds hauled his family — and several enslaved people — by wagon and on foot from Gordon County, Georgia, to Henderson County, Texas. Optimistic about its future, he named his settlement New York and donated land for the community's first cemetery, where his daughter's 1863 burial was the first marked grave. His hopes for a great city faded when the railroad bypassed New York in 1901, but the church, cemetery, and family store still endure.

Denison, TX

Around 1840, blacksmith Micajah C. Davis (1790–1860), one of Grayson County's founders, raised this cabin of hand-hewn oak logs at the Iron Ore Creek settlement near present Denison. Passing to the Ansley family in 1870 and occupied by their descendants into the 1950s, the pioneer home was later donated to the Old Settlers Village to be preserved.