Historic Markers in Texas

Fort Worth, TX

South Carolina-born Thomas Neville Waul practiced law in Mississippi before settling in Texas in 1850. He served in the Provisional Confederate Congress and signed the 1861 Confederate constitution, then raised Waul's Texas Legion and led it in the defense of Vicksburg in 1862–63. In 1864 he commanded a brigade in the Red River Campaign at Mansfield and Jenkins' Ferry before returning to his Texas law practice after the war.

Sulphur Springs, TX

This memorial honors General William H. King, a Georgian who moved to Texas in 1861 and rose to command the 18th Texas Infantry. He led his regiment through the Red River campaigns of 1863 and 1864 that helped keep Union forces from splitting the Confederacy or invading Texas, was wounded at Mansfield and promoted to brigadier general, and later served as the state's adjutant general. The marker doubles as a broader tribute to the roughly 90,000 Texans who fought for the Confederacy.

Corpus Christi, TX

William Warren Sterling embodied the arc of the twentieth-century Texas lawman, rising from the ranks of the Rangers to serve as the state's Adjutant General from 1931 to 1933. A towering figure remembered for his marksmanship and horsemanship, he scouted for the U.S. Army during the tense border troubles of 1914–1917 and later wore a colonel's insignia in World War II. His career braided together the frontier traditions of ranching and law enforcement with the modern demands of a state on the move.

Franklin, TX

Walter Washington Williams was reputed to be the last surviving soldier of the Civil War, said to have served as a forage master for the celebrated Hood's Texas Brigade. Born in Mississippi in 1842, he moved to Texas soon after the war and farmed near here, living quietly until extreme old age brought him fame as one of the last living veterans. President Dwight D. Eisenhower gave him the honorary rank of general and proclaimed national mourning at his death in 1959. He rests in Mount Pleasant Cemetery, one of the oldest burial grounds in Robertson County, within the colony planted in the 1820s by pioneer Sterling C. Robertson.

Fort Worth, TX

William Jenkins Worth of Hudson, New York, made a soldier's career that spanned the early republic's wars: badly wounded at Lundy's Lane in the War of 1812, he later commanded cadets at West Point, campaigned against the Sac and Fox and the Florida Seminoles, took part in Cherokee removal, and won a Sword of Honor from Congress for his conduct in the Mexican War. He died of cholera at San Antonio in 1849 while commanding the Texas and New Mexico military districts. Though he never saw this ground, the frontier post of Fort Worth was named in his memory.

Dunlay, TX

During the Mexican counter-invasions of 1842, General Adrián Woll marched an army north to seize San Antonio from the young Republic of Texas—and had a fresh road cut through the brush country so his column could approach undetected. Woll took the city by surprise that September, held it a week, and clashed with Texian volunteers at Salado Creek before retreating along the same secret road. The route long outlived the campaign, serving settlers and freight haulers for decades.

Castroville, TX

In 1846, as the United States went to war with Mexico, General John Ellis Wool gathered 3,400 troops in San Antonio for an intended march on Chihuahua, crossing the Medina River and passing through Castroville before orders redirected him to reinforce General Zachary Taylor. The path his army traced—echoing an earlier Mexican retreat—hardened into the Chihuahua Road, a vital artery of westward trade. Castroville's central position and reliable water made it a thriving stop for travelers and freighters.

Sarita, TX

On March 15, 1846, General Zachary Taylor camped beneath a tree at this spot as he marched his "Army of Occupation" south from Corpus Christi toward the Rio Grande. Within weeks the clash of his troops with Mexican forces along that river would ignite the Mexican-American War. Taylor's popularity as a wartime commander soon carried him to the White House.

Geneva, TX

On land first granted in 1794, the community that became Geneva took shape in the 1820s as settlers pushed in from the east, passing through names like Shawnee Village and Jimtown before settling on Geneva. Levi T. Allen deeded ground for a church and cemetery in 1879, and the Geneva Myrtle Springs Cemetery became the resting place of the area's pioneer families. Its stones honor veterans stretching from the Civil War through both World Wars, Korea, and Iraq.

Houston, TX

In 1894 fourteen people gathered in the township of Genoa under the Rev. J.R. Murray to organize the community's first Methodist congregation, chartered the next year with thirty-three members. A sawmill owner's gift of two pine trees supplied lumber for their first church in 1898, and the congregation grew through new buildings in 1937 and 1957. When Houston annexed Genoa in the mid-1960s, the church anchored local identity with picnics, a rodeo arena, scouting, and community outreach.

Maydelle, TX

Perched atop Gent Mountain between two creeks, the village of Gent was settled in the 1850s by families from Alabama and Tennessee seeking good farmland. They quickly raised churches and schools, and by 1900 the village supported stores, mills, and cotton gins. But when the Texas State Railroad bypassed it and the town of Maydelle was founded nearby in 1910, business drained away, and today not a single structure of Gent remains.

Stephenville, TX

Built in 1873, this limestone commercial block was the first stone building on Stephenville's courthouse square, raised by merchants James Shelton — a Confederate veteran and former deputy — and George Gentry. Over the years it housed everything from a mercantile store and county offices to a tire shop and saloon, its basement reputedly serving as the county jail before the courthouse was finished.

Mineral, TX

Born on a nearby ranch, Gentry Dugat became a colorful Bee County historian, orator, and journalist who earned a law degree and worked on seven Texas newspapers, editing the Cotton Ginners Journal and writing a biography of the post–Civil War editor Henry W. Grady. A World War I veteran and avid collector of rare books, newspapers, and artifacts, he organized and chaired the Bee County Historical Commission in 1958. The county honored his memory with this marker.

Brady vicinity, TX

Five miles northwest lies the geographic center of Texas, an imaginary point balancing the state into four equal areas. The marker fans out from there into a portrait of Texas's sheer scale — some 267,339 square miles, a 4,137-mile border, elevations from sea level to Guadalupe Peak's 8,751 feet, and rainfall ranging from Miami-like abundance in the east to Phoenix-like scarcity in the far west. It notes that fifteen states could fit inside the whole.

Dumas, TX

The land around Dumas has been prized for its geology far longer than any oil derrick suggests. Prehistoric peoples mined flint from quarries along the Canadian River — an early Texas "industry" whose tools turn up across the western United States — and built sturdy, insulated homes from local dolomite slabs, an unusually advanced technique for the era. Centuries later, modern Moore County tapped a different underground treasure, oil and gas, to support dozens of industries.

San Antonio, TX

Georg Heinrich Buchsenschutz, a veteran of the Mexican War, came to Texas in 1850 and by 1860 had bought more than 200 acres of farmland here, marrying Friederike Schulmeier the same year and raising ten children. When their eldest daughter died at fifteen in 1881, she was buried on the homestead, and her father joined her in 1895; a dozen more family members followed over the next half-century. The small family cemetery, recognized as a Historic Texas Cemetery in 2001, remains open to descendants.

Austin, TX

Built around 1904 for grocery and feed merchant George A. Peterson, this late Victorian T-plan home stands out for its clip-cornered front bay, an unusual variation for East Austin. Its one-over-one sash windows and porch trimmed with spindled balusters, elaborate brackets, and a spindled canopy display the ornate craftsmanship of the period. The house survives as a fine example of a once-common architectural style in the neighborhood.

Orange, TX

A War of 1812 veteran born in Georgia in 1796, George Alexander Pattillo migrated to southeast Texas in the early 1830s and threw himself into the region's revolutionary politics, serving on a Committee of Correspondence and the provisional government's General Council. He aided the Texas Army during the 1836 revolution, arriving at San Jacinto the day after the battle, and was tasked by President David G. Burnet with organizing Jefferson County. He later served in the Republic of Texas Congress, championed annexation, and became Orange County's first judge in 1852.

Houston, TX

Born in New York in 1812, George Allen came to Texas in the 1830s and fought in the war for independence, later joining the Somervell Expedition. In 1838 he settled in Houston to help his brothers Augustus and John Kirby Allen establish the new city, and in 1839 became the first committeeman charged with improving Buffalo Bayou, its vital shipping artery. His work helped set Houston on its course as a commercial port.

Wichita Falls, TX

George Alonzo Soule ran freight and stage lines in Jacksboro and Fort Griffin before following the Fort Worth and Denver Railroad to Wichita Falls in 1883. From this site near the business district he hauled passengers and goods across North Texas and into Oklahoma—occasionally at the mercy of highwaymen—until rail traffic finally overtook the stagecoach and he shifted to running livery barns.

Sulphur Springs, TX

Soon after they married in 1881, George and Myra Wilson set about transforming Sulphur Springs from a small town into a city. George and his brother ran a brick plant and built many of its landmarks—the City National Bank, First Baptist Church, and several county courthouses—while Myra led the Ladies' Cemetery Society for 43 years, helped found the public library, and raised money for a cemetery chapel. Together they typified the civic energy that reshaped a once-frontier Texas town.

Pampa, TX

Long before he became a household name, young West Point engineer George B. McClellan crossed this country in 1852 as part of Randolph Marcy's expedition exploring the Texas Panhandle, leaving his name on a nearby creek and, later, a lake. He went on to design the army saddle still bearing his name, lead the Union Army as a general, and run against Abraham Lincoln for the presidency in 1864 before serving as governor of New Jersey. This marker ties a familiar Civil War figure to his little-known early days surveying the West.

Fort Worth, TX

Fort Worth merchant George B. Monnig and his wife Lura acquired this property in 1905, only to lose their first frame house to a neighborhood fire in 1909. They rebuilt in 1910 with this durable brick home, its corbelled brickwork, milled wood, and cut limestone blending Bungalow and Arts-and-Crafts fashions. The family held the house until 1947, leaving behind a fine example of early-twentieth-century Texas domestic architecture.

Magnolia, TX

In the mid-1840s a young Englishman, George Bell Madeley, left the outskirts of Birmingham for the raw new Republic-turned-state of Texas, married another English emigrant, and built a nearly self-sufficient plantation in the community then called Egypt. His farm knit together orchards, vineyards, a cotton gin, and both grist and sugar mills, and the family cemetery began in 1848 with the burial of his brother-in-law. Tended today by descendants, the grounds hold the Madeleys and the neighbors who shared their frontier world.

College Station, TX

This marker commemorates George H.W. Bush, the 41st President of the United States, noting his World War II service as a young Navy lieutenant junior grade — he was among the nation's youngest naval aviators. After a long career in public service he settled in College Station, Texas, home to the George Bush Presidential Library at Texas A&M University, where he and his wife are memorialized. The listing of his naval rank and service number echoes the plain style of a military honor marker.

Midland, TX

In 1948 a young Navy veteran named George H. W. Bush moved his family to West Texas to break into the oil business, and by the early 1950s they had settled in Midland. From this home on West Ohio Avenue, bought as his oil ventures succeeded, the family lived through both joy and heartbreak — son Jeb was born here, while daughter Robin died of leukemia in 1953. Two future presidents and two future first ladies were tied to this Midland ground.

Mineola, TX

A Georgia native, George C. Reeves reached the brand-new railroad town of Mineola soon after its 1873 founding and served as city marshal. Through his friendship with county attorney and future governor Jim Hogg, he became a transfer agent for the state penitentiary system while building ventures in cattle, lumber, and real estate. A tireless booster, he promoted Wood County's farms with exhibits at the State Fair of Texas and led the Agricultural Exhibitors Association.

Galveston, TX

Born to a prominent Nashville family, George Campbell Childress trained as a lawyer and editor before following his uncle, the empresario Sterling Robertson, to Texas. Elected a delegate to the Convention of 1836, he is regarded as the primary author of the Texas Declaration of Independence, adopted on March 2, 1836. His later efforts to win recognition and build a law practice failed, and, despondent, he took his own life in Galveston in 1841; Childress County was named in his honor.

Galveston, TX

George Campbell Childress, born in Nashville in 1804, is remembered as the principal author and a signer of the Texas Declaration of Independence in 1836. This state marker honors his role in the founding of the Republic of Texas. He died in Galveston in 1841.

Washington, TX

Born in Nashville in 1804, George Campbell Childress came to Texas in 1835 after helping raise funds and volunteers for the Texas cause. As a delegate to the 1836 Constitutional Convention held at Washington-on-the-Brazos, he chaired the Committee of Five that drafted the Texas Declaration of Independence, and he was soon dispatched to Washington to seek U.S. recognition of the new republic. He died in Galveston in 1841.

Galveston, TX

An English-born immigrant who settled in Galveston in 1870 with his wife and nine children, George Dealey was a devout man who turned his faith toward charity. In 1878 he opened the Island City Protestant Orphans Asylum in a rented house, and with clergy support and citizen donations the home grew, moved, and was chartered as it settled on this site. Renamed the Galveston Orphans' Home, it long kept the admittance standards its founder set. Two of his sons went on to lead the Dallas Morning News.

Edna, TX

George F. Horton built this house in 1876 in Old Texana, a once-promising Jackson County town, and when its fortunes faded he simply dismantled the home and moved it to nearby Edna in 1882. A Confederate veteran who became a businessman and postmaster, Horton belonged to the generation rebuilding civilian lives across Texas after the Civil War. The house was recorded as a Texas Historic Landmark in 1965.

Galveston, TX

Shortly after the Civil War, George Fox joined his father's Galveston bakery, an establishment dating to 1837, and built himself into a successful merchant by the turn of the century. Around 1903 he built this Queen Anne home with classical revival detailing for his wife Elizabeth and their family, probably replacing an earlier house destroyed in the catastrophic 1900 hurricane. Fox family members lived here until 1955.

Kingsbury, TX

George Francis fought in the 1836 Texas War for Independence, then brought his family to Texas and built this house on York's Creek in 1849, near a crossing used by the San Antonio-to-Bastrop mail route. A generation later, all six of his sons marched from this home to serve the Confederacy in the Civil War. Several never returned — one killed at Chickamauga, another dying in service at Galveston, and a third falling at the 1864 Battle of Mansfield.

Crockett, TX

A New York native and War of 1812 officer, George G. Alford came to Texas in 1836 and served as quartermaster general under Sam Houston during the Texas Revolution. Captured by Mexican forces on a later supply mission for the young Republic, he won his release through the intervention of President Andrew Jackson, then settled into life as a plantation owner and county judge.

Columbus, TX

Born into slavery in 1850 and raised on a Colorado County ranch, George Glenn trained as a cowhand and trail cook and stayed on the Johnson Ranch as a free man after Emancipation. On an 1870 cattle drive to Abilene his employer, Bob Johnson, died; after the herd was sold, Glenn disinterred the body and drove it nearly 800 miles home by wagon over six weeks for reburial. Honored decades later at Old Trail Drivers reunions and interviewed by folklorist J. Frank Dobie, he became one of the few Black members remembered by name from the great cattle-drive era.

Cameron, TX

George Green fought at the Battle of San Jacinto, the decisive 1836 clash that won Texas its independence from Mexico. Beyond the battlefield he served as a ranger and surveyor, helping map and secure the young republic's frontier, and became an honored citizen of Milam County. The State of Texas erected this marker to his memory in 1962.

Galveston, TX

George H. Nicholls arrived in Galveston as a mariner and found his fortune in the warehouse trade, starting as the first employee of Geo. M. Steirer & Co. In 1888 he and a partner bought out their employer to form Wiley & Nicholls, a warehousing and freight-transfer firm at 19th Street and the Strand. As the business prospered, Nicholls built this home in 1893—the first house on 24th Street—living here until moving to a larger residence in 1899.

Robstown, TX

Robstown sprang up in 1903 where two rail lines crossed, and boomed after land developer George H. Paul assembled some 300,000 acres of former ranch land and carved it into cotton farms, running special trains to recruit buyers from the East and Midwest. The two-story brick Paul Building, raised here in 1908, was the town's hub — general store, first school, church meeting room, and later the bank whose stability carried it through the Great Depression. The building came down in 1972, replaced by a modern bank on the same ground.

San Marcos, TX

George H. Talmadge (1840–1911), an Illinois farmer and Union Army veteran of the Civil War, moved to San Marcos in 1888 with his wife Lydia and their children, including an adopted daughter orphaned by the Great Chicago Fire. A carpenter by trade, Talmadge built this Victorian house of cypress in 1889. His family lived in the home for 86 years.

Fort Worth, TX

Born in Fort Worth in 1926, George Herman O'Brien, Jr. served in the Merchant Marine, earned a geology degree from Texas Tech, and was called to active Marine Corps duty after war broke out in Korea. On October 27, 1952, ordered to retake a vital hill known as the Hook near the 38th parallel, Second Lieutenant O'Brien spearheaded a four-hour assault—much of it hand-to-hand—pressing the attack despite repeated wounds before setting a defense and tending his men. For that valor he received the Medal of Honor, later returning to Texas to work as a petroleum geologist.

Beeville, TX

In 1890, Will H. and Julia George raised this elegant cottage on land Julia inherited from her father, Maj. J.H. Wood, a New Yorker who had come south to fight in the Texas War for Independence before building a cattle empire. Reusing materials from an earlier house on the property, the couple created a home whose finely detailed woodwork made it a center of Beeville's social and cultural life around the turn of the century. Remodeled in 1900, it has passed down through Wood's descendants.

Georgetown, TX

Scottish immigrant George Irvine built this two-story frame home for his family in 1886 in the growing college town of Georgetown. Founder of the Irvine Brothers Lumber Co., later the Belford Lumber Co., he was a pillar of civic life, serving on the school board, city council, and the vestry of Grace Episcopal Church. In 1922 he sold the house to postmaster Simon J. Enochs, who reworked its original Italianate detailing in the 1930s.

Hillsboro, TX

Tennessee native George L. Porter married Roxie Brooks, daughter of an early Hill County official, in 1881, and rose from merchant in nearby Peoria to bank officer in Hillsboro. In 1901 Roxie's brother built this Queen Anne house—with its wrapping porch, Tuscan columns, and decorative shingles—and sold it to the couple, who were leaders in the town's civic life and First Baptist Church. It survives as a fine example of turn-of-the-century Texas domestic architecture.

Paradise, TX

George Lafayette Ramsdale left Devonshire, England, and by 1836 had reached Texas, enlisting in the army during the war for independence from Mexico. He and his wife Elizabeth moved across several counties before the Civil War, when he served the Confederacy guarding the frontier. Settling in Wise County in 1866, he farmed and ran a tannery until his death in 1884.

Aurora, TX

Georgia-born George Lawton Bledsoe, a carpenter and cotton-gin builder, came to Texas in 1834 and fought in the Texas Revolution, including the decisive Battle of San Jacinto. He earned a military pension and patented land grants across five counties as the young republic and state took shape. He is buried here alongside his daughter and a brother-in-law.

Westhoff, TX

Born in England in 1816, George Lord immigrated to Canada and then New Orleans before joining volunteers for the army of the young Republic of Texas in 1837. He fought through the turbulent 1830s and '40s—the Córdova Rebellion, the Somervell Expedition, and the ill-fated Mier Expedition, where he survived the notorious Black Bean lottery and imprisonment at Perote—then served as a Ranger in the Mexican War. In 1849 he joined the Gold Rush to California, marrying Kate Myers along the way, and the couple returned with a fortune in gold to establish a Longhorn ranch in DeWitt County.

McKinney, TX

George McGarrah brought his family to this corner of North Texas in the 1840s as a member of the Peters Colony, having already left his mark as a builder in Fayetteville, Arkansas. On his own land he set aside a small family burying ground, becoming its first occupant in 1879. Its ten graves hold three generations of his family—and, in an unmarked plot, a person he had enslaved.

Perryton, TX

An Iowa native, George Morgan Perry came to the raw Texas Panhandle in 1886 and helped stitch a frontier region into an organized county, serving as clerk and judge. A tireless booster of the railroads then reaching the plains, he was honored when the Santa Fe placed a townsite on its line in 1919 and named it Perryton for him. As the town's first Chamber of Commerce president, he promoted its settlement and growth until his death in 1944.

Corpus Christi, TX

Born into slavery in Kentucky in 1843, George Owens enlisted in the Union Army in 1864 and served with the 116th United States Colored Infantry through the Appomattox Campaign that ended the Civil War. He then joined the newly formed 9th Cavalry—one of the regiments Plains nations called Buffalo Soldiers—patrolling and guarding the west Texas frontier before settling in Corpus Christi, where he died in 1879.

Pecos, TX

George R. Reeves raised and captained a company in the 11th Texas Cavalry at the Civil War's outbreak, campaigning across Arkansas, the Indian Territory, and the 1862 invasion of Kentucky. Promoted to colonel and command of his regiment by 1863, he led it at the bloody battle of Chickamauga and through the grinding Atlanta campaign, opposing Sherman's march to the sea and fighting on into the Carolinas in 1865. The West Texas county and town of Pecos's Reeves County bear his name.

Pottsboro, TX

George R. Reeves, born in Tennessee in 1826, came to Texas around 1845 and climbed steadily through public life as a Grayson County tax collector, sheriff, and state representative. During the Civil War he served as a Confederate officer, fighting at Chickamauga and through the grinding Hundred Days Atlanta Campaign. He returned to politics afterward and rose to Speaker of the Texas House before his death in 1882 — the man for whom vast Reeves County was later named.

Graford, TX

George Rice Bevers settled this spot on the Fort Worth–Fort Belknap Road in 1854, near Flat Rock Crossing of Keechi Creek, where he fed and housed travelers such as famed Indian agent Robert S. Neighbors. Palo Pinto County's first school opened nearby in 1856, and the family lived among noted pioneer neighbors like the Curetons, Goodnights and Slaughters. The nearby Bevers Cemetery holds a victim of the Indian raids of the 1860s that drove frightened settlers to seek refuge as far away as the Fort Worth courthouse.

West Columbia, TX

New Yorker George Rounds fought in Colonel James W. Fannin's regiment during the Texas War for Independence and survived the Goliad Massacre that claimed most of his comrades. Settling in Columbia, he ran a tavern and, shortly before his death, left his estate to educate poor and orphaned children. When oil and gas were found on his land in the 1930s, the fund's value soared, and his bequest still aids local students.

Galveston, TX

Galveston-born merchant George Seeligson built this house in 1875 on another lot in the block, later moving it here when his family put up a larger residence in 1887. Like many of the island's fine homes, it blends Greek Revival lines with Victorian flourishes. It passed to his daughter Lillian Winterbotham and, in 1954, to the Johnson family.

Webberville, TX

George Self served in Captain Jesse Billingsley's company at the Battle of San Jacinto on April 21, 1836, the brief and decisive clash that secured Texas independence. His terse grave marker, noting only his service and his death in 1856, is typical of the plain memorials raised to the Republic's soldier-settlers. It preserves the memory of one man among the small army that won a nation.

Rockdale, TX

Born in Rockdale in 1910, George Sessions Perry drew on his small-town Texas boyhood for a celebrated body of fiction and nonfiction, winning the 1941 National Book Award. During World War II he reported firsthand from the front for The New Yorker and The Saturday Evening Post, bringing the war home to millions of American readers before his death in the mid-1950s.

Jefferson, TX

Captain George T. Todd, a Confederate veteran who became a district attorney, state legislator, and senior East Texas attorney, built this late Victorian home in Jefferson in 1893 for his large family. Distinguished by a corner tower with a mansard roof, the house remains in the hands of his descendants.

Corsicana, TX

George Taylor Jester came to Corsicana from Illinois as a boy, working for fifty cents a day on the county's first brick building before making his name in dry goods, cotton, and banking. He joined the Confederate army in the war's final year, then climbed through the Texas legislature to serve as lieutenant governor from 1894 to 1898. A founder of Southern Methodist University, he also fathered a future Texas governor, Beauford Jester.

Houston, TX

Raised in Houston's Fifth Ward and trained as a pharmacist, Mickey Leland won a Texas House seat at 27 and championed civil rights, voting rights, and affordable health care. A 1973 trip to famine-stricken Tanzania reshaped his mission, and after succeeding Barbara Jordan in Congress in 1978 he founded a House committee on world hunger and secured hundreds of millions in famine relief. He died in a 1989 plane crash on a relief mission to refugee camps in Ethiopia.