Westward Expansion

Sabinal, TX

Sabinal took its name from the Spanish for the Rio Sabina and the cypress trees along the river, and was founded in 1854 by Thomas B. Hammer, who ran a stage stop and served as first postmaster. Despite the danger of Indian raids, the town grew as settlers built homes and a railroad arrived in 1881, leading to incorporation in 1906. It briefly hosted Sabinal Christian College (1907–1917) and thrived on cotton before farming and ranching became its mainstays.

Sabinal, TX

Sabinal Methodist Church began in 1876 as a stop on the Sabinal circuit under the Rev. Henry T. Hill, served by traveling ministers until it organized as a congregation in 1900. Worshippers met in the Christian and Baptist churches until this building was completed in 1907, and for a time its pastors also tended new rural congregations at Trio and Knippa. As membership grew, the congregation expanded its facilities to meet the community's needs.

Hemphill, TX

One of the original 23 counties of the Republic of Texas, Sabine County takes its name from the river that marks the Louisiana border. Long home to the Ais people of the Caddo, the area saw Spanish explorers pass through and later became a gateway for American settlers—Stephen F. Austin among them—entering Mexican Texas. Formed in 1837, the county built its economy on timber floated down the Sabine to sawmills, weathered the Great Depression and years without a bank, and revived when the vast Toledo Bend Reservoir rose in the 1960s.

Hemphill, TX

An 1858 election moved the seat of Sabine County from Milam to a more central spot, and the new town was named Hemphill for former Texas Supreme Court Justice John Hemphill. The first courthouse burned in 1875 and was replaced by a larger frame building, and the present structure was begun in 1906 by N. A. Dawson. After a 1909 fire, its upper floors were rebuilt, and the Works Progress Administration completed a remodeling in 1938.

Hemphill, TX

Sabine County commissioners contracted for this two-story Victorian jail in 1903, completing it the following year with bricks from Henry Huffman's local kiln. Its original interior even included an area for hangings, a grim reminder of frontier justice, before the San Antonio-based Southern Steel Company remodeled the cells in 1925. The building was recorded as a Texas Historic Landmark in 1980.

Sabine Town, TX

In the 1830s S. H. Morris sold part of his land grant to establish the town of Sabine, which grew to include a post office, customs house, wagon factory, brick kiln, and tannery. Its cemetery holds 18 known graves, the earliest being Mary Jane Scott's 1842 burial, and remained in use until 1907. Since 1970 the local chapter of the Daughters of the Republic of Texas has cared for the site.

Portland, OR

Erected by the women of the United States, this statue honors Sacagawea, the young Lemhi Shoshone woman who traveled with the Lewis and Clark expedition from 1804 to 1806, her infant son Jean-Baptiste on her back. Her presence and knowledge helped guide the Corps of Discovery across the continent to the Pacific. Generations later, suffrage-era women claimed her as a symbol and the 'pioneer mother of Oregon.'

Sachse, TX

Before the railroad arrived, this stretch of Dallas County prairie was ranch and farm land worked by a handful of settlers. In 1886 landowner William Sachse deeded a right-of-way to the Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe Railroad, which in return platted a townsite and named the depot for him. The village stayed tiny for decades—drawing water from shallow wells and relying on the county for roads and law—until residents incorporated in 1956 largely to qualify for district water, running early city government out of a small cinder-block pump station on this spot.

San Angelo, TX

Catholic priests had visited the Concho River country since the 1600s, but a lasting church took root only after Fort Concho's 1867 founding, when Father Mathurin Pairier began caring for the soldiers and settlers of the frontier. On land donated in 1874 by San Angelo promoter Bart DeWitt, he completed the town's first church building in 1884, serving a mingled congregation of Mexican, English, Irish, and German Catholics soon joined by teaching Sisters of Charity. Rebuilt as Sacred Heart in 1906, it became the cathedral of the new Diocese of San Angelo in 1961 and remains the mother church of West Texas Catholicism.

Del Rio, TX

Before this limestone church rose in 1891-92, Catholics in the border town of Del Rio gathered for Mass in private homes and a simple wooden building on this spot. Guided by the Oblate fathers, the mission grew into Sacred Heart parish in 1895, and the Gothic Revival structure was enlarged and remodeled in 1929. Its stained-glass windows later followed the congregation to a new church dedicated in 1969.

Menard, TX

Catholic worship reached the frontier town of Menard as early as 1872, when J.J. Callan set aside a lot for a future church. For years visiting priests said Mass in homes and even the courthouse until 1899, when this native-stone church rose under Father P. Beaudrillard for Sacred Heart Parish. Its Gothic Revival lines and lancet windows brought a touch of Old World devotion to the West Texas plains.

Rowlett, TX

Sacred Heart, the second Catholic church organized in Dallas County, grew from the devotion of Irish immigrant Patrick McEntee, who came to Texas in 1874 and helped build the local railroad. Tradition holds that services were held in his home before this Gothic Revival church was built in 1899 and dedicated the next year, its thirteen stained-glass windows reputedly imported from Germany. In 1922 parishioners turned the whole building around to face the new Bankhead Highway, resetting it on its original foundation.

Sadler, TX

Already serving as the Bethlehem Cemetery when it was formally recorded in 1884, this Grayson County burial ground was renamed after S.M. and Maggie Lester conveyed nearly four acres to trustees and the Sadler Cemetery Association formed. Dedicated "to be used by the public as a public cemetery, and for no other purposes," it expanded through further land gifts into the twentieth century. Among its roughly one thousand burials lie town namesake and Civil War veteran J.J. Sadler, thirty-seven veterans spanning the Civil War through Vietnam, and generations of pioneer families, teachers, and civic leaders.

Coryell City, TX

Settlers, many from Tennessee, reached the Rainey's Creek area in the early 1850s in the community later renamed Coryell City. Chester Calhoun Sadler, a farmer, freighter, and Confederate veteran, set aside land for a cemetery serving his family and neighbors. His stepson Ira Bradford Sadler, a Confederate soldier and prisoner of war who became a lawyer and legislator, lies here among other Civil War veterans and pioneer families.

Sadler, TX

Organized in September 1876 in a schoolhouse west of the Sadler Cemetery, this congregation began as Quillin's Chapel under founding pastor the Rev. William M. Robbins, who then rode the Dexter circuit. It was renamed Salem Methodist in 1880 and became Sadler Methodist when it moved to this site in 1895. Local contractor Joe Cariker built the present sanctuary in 1910.

Village of Cove Neck, NY

This was the home of Theodore Roosevelt, who served as governor of New York before becoming the 26th president of the United States. From his North Shore estate, Roosevelt conducted so much business during his presidency that the house became known as the 'Summer White House.' It remained his cherished retreat and the center of his family life throughout his public career.

Saginaw, TX

In the 1890s John Allebaugh Bowman led nineteen people on a three-week journey from Missouri to Tarrant County, where he founded the Saginaw Cemetery Association to serve nearby residents. His son John David was the first buried here in February 1899—soon followed by tragedy, as John A., his wife, and another son all died within months, leaving nine orphaned children. Incorporated in 1899, expanded around 1910, and holding veterans from World War I onward, the cemetery remains a chronicle of the community despite the loss of early records in a 1925 fire.

Bryan, TX

This parish grew from Episcopal services held in nearby Millican in 1864, but a yellow fever epidemic drove the mission to relocate to Bryan in 1867, where a parish formed that same year. Its first church was consecrated in 1868, and a new sanctuary opened at this location in 1914. Across a century and a quarter, Saint Andrew's became a fixture of Bryan's community life.

Austin, TX

Cornerstone laid in 1853 on a site set aside for sacred use, this was the capital city's first stone church, its native limestone blending Spanish mission lines with Gothic detail. Its founders included officials of the recently dissolved Republic of Texas, and its rector, Edward Fontaine, was a great-grandson of Patrick Henry. Renamed Saint David's in 1859, it became the home church of the first Episcopal bishop of Texas, its 1853 Philadelphia bell still ringing.

Terrell, TX

Terrell sprang up in 1873 when the Texas & Pacific Railroad reached this point, and this parcel—the oldest church site in town—was acquired by Bishop Claude-Marie Dubuis in 1876. The first church was dedicated that November, joined by an outdoor shrine in 1945 and a remodeling in 1949. The site has anchored Catholic worship in Terrell for well over a century.

Lockhart, TX

In the early 1870s the Rev. John Henry Winn led a group of freedmen and their families from Webberville to a new home south of Lockhart, where fourteen founding families pooled their money to buy some 2,000 acres for a town and farms. First called Winn's Colony, it was renamed Saint John Colony after Winn organized Saint John Missionary Baptist Church in 1873, and grew to roughly a hundred families with stores, a school, a cotton gin, and a grist mill. The post office and school eventually closed, but the churches remain active and descendants of the founders still live there.

Hondo, TX

Raised in 1912 from locally made Seco brick, this was the second church to serve Hondo's Catholic community, designed by San Antonio architect Fred Bowen Gaenslen and built during the pastorate of the Rev. J. J. Meyers. Its round arches, brick detailing, and tripartite window mark it as Romanesque Revival. It hosted worship until 1969 and was rededicated as a parish hall in 1972.

Columbus, TX

Episcopal worship reached Columbus as early as 1848 through circuit-riding clergy, and in 1856 the Rev. Hannibal Pratt organized Saint John's Parish. For decades the congregation met wherever it could—a castle-like private home, the courthouse, even the Methodist church—before building on Milam Street in 1874. Sustained by bequests from parish women, it consecrated its present brick sanctuary in 1942.

Alamo, TX

As the young town of Alamo incorporated in 1924, deep in the fast-developing Rio Grande Valley, the Alamo Land and Sugar Company set aside ground for a church, and a Gothic Revival sanctuary rose that same year. St. Joseph Parish grew under the guidance of priests from McAllen's Sacred Heart until it stood on its own in 1927. Beyond worship, its halls doubled as a community gathering place and, when hurricanes swept the coast, a shelter for the displaced.

Hamilton, TX

Hamilton County's first Episcopal congregation began in 1868 in a private home, served by Alexander Gregg, Texas's first bishop, who rode horseback all the way from Galveston. A donated site in 1891 made way for a Gothic-style building, its bell given by a St. Louis merchant, consecrated in 1896. It stands as a Recorded Texas Historic Landmark.

Blanco vicinity, TX

When the first Catholic families settled Blanco County in the 1850s, they worshiped in homes and halls until land was bought in 1887. Through the efforts of Father Virgilius Draessel and the people of Twin Sisters, this stone church was built and dedicated in 1889, its foundation quarried a mile away and its other materials hauled more than thirty miles over rough trails. It was recorded as a Texas Historic Landmark in 1965.

Kenedy, TX

Episcopalians in Kenedy gathered for worship as early as 1899, though their St. Matthew's mission was not formally organized until 1913. Designed by Frank Corby and completed in 1916 as the county's only Episcopal church, the Gothic Revival building in a Latin-cross plan features tall pointed-arch windows and buttresses; its tower, damaged in a 1942 hurricane, was rebuilt with a gabled roof.

Gainesville, TX

Founded in 1877, Saint Paul's grew quickly in frontier-era Gainesville, with Bishop A. C. Garrett laying its cornerstone in 1884 on land donated by civic leader Judge J. M. Lindsay. Built of locally made brick over a foundation of huge limestone slabs hauled to the site by oxcart, the English Gothic church held its first service in 1885. It became a parish in 1888 and was among the thirteen original parishes when the Diocese of Dallas was created in 1895.

Milford, OH

Universalism—the once-radical conviction that salvation awaits all souls rather than a chosen few—spread across the young United States in the late 18th and 19th centuries, drawing congregations of freethinkers who broke with sterner Calvinist doctrine. A Saint Paul's Universalist Church in Milford reflects that current reaching the settlements rising along the Little Miami River in southwestern Ohio, where communities newly carved out of the frontier built their meetinghouses as centers of both worship and civic life. Churches like this one anchored small Ohio towns in an era when a congregation's building often doubled as the gathering place for a whole community.

Salado, TX

Fed by gushing limestone springs at the Balcones Fault, Salado Creek drew people to its fish-rich, tree-shaded banks for centuries—Native peoples camped along it, and Spanish explorers gave it its name. Archibald Willingham became the first Anglo-American settler in 1851, and by 1860 the town and college of Salado rose on the creek. With as many as eight mills, it became the county's industrial center, and both the Chisholm Cattle Trail and the Dallas-San Antonio stage line crossed its waters.

Salado, TX

Organized in 1854 beside Salado Creek, this Methodist congregation was served in its early years by circuit-riding preachers, among them the Rev. J. E. Ferguson, whose son would become a Texas governor. When the members built this sanctuary in 1890, Charlie Bailey and Wallie Harkey hauled the lumber by wagon some fifty miles from Austin. Descendants of the original members worship here still.

Inez, TX

In 1910 the Higginson Colonization Company platted farms, orchards, and a townsite in northeast Victoria County, marketing tracts to settlers who came from Ohio, Kansas, Indiana, and Pennsylvania. Named Salem — Hebrew for "peace" — and also called the "Colony of Brotherly Love," the community soon had a post office, a two-room school, and a Brethren in Christ church. Civic life centered on figures like Rose Lambert Musselman, a former Mennonite missionary who ran the post office and a general store. Inconsistent harvests sapped the small tracts' appeal, and the colony faded in the late 1930s.

Annona, TX

The Rev. Thomas Wilson Anderson organized Salem Baptist Church with twelve charter members in 1856, and by 1871 the congregation had settled at its present location in the Boxelder community. Its two-story building of 1918 shared its upper floor with the local Woodmen of the World chapter, and the current structure went up in 1945. For generations the church has been the focal point of rural Boxelder, ministering to the community and supporting missions.

Bangs, TX

Salem Cemetery, near Bangs in Brown County, carries an official Historic Texas Cemetery medallion, the state designation recognizing burial grounds of historical significance. Like many rural Central Texas cemeteries, it preserves the resting place of the settler families who put down roots in the region.

Sayers, TX

Established in 1880, Salem Cemetery serves a rural community in Bexar County east of San Antonio. Designated a Historic Texas Cemetery in 2006, it holds the graves of the farming families who settled the area in the late 19th century. Its name reflects the biblical place-names German and Anglo settlers often gave their new Texas communities.

Teague, TX

Established around 1853, this burial ground dates to the first years of Anglo settlement in Freestone County, when small family and community cemeteries were among the earliest permanent marks a pioneer settlement left on the land. Recognized as a Historic Texas Cemetery, it preserves the resting place of the area's early residents.

Irene, TX

Burials at this Hill County site began in 1871, with the oldest surviving graves those of the infant Sheet twins and Synthia Green. In 1876 landowners deeded the ground to the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, for a church, school, and cemetery, and the still-active Salem Cemetery Association formed in 1904. Among the more than 800 people buried here is Nathaniel Addison, a veteran of the Texas Revolution.

Gainesville, TX

Hand-dug by local citizens in the late 1800s under P.G. Dotson's direction, this brick-lined well reached seventeen feet down to serve the Salem — later Shady Grove — community. Built to supply the nearby Salem School, it also watered homes, farms, churches, and livestock, and became a favorite gathering and courting spot for young couples. The adjoining school doubled as a church, and during World War II the community's women met there to pray for loved ones serving overseas.

Barclay, TX

Salem Lutheran Church was organized in a Falls County schoolhouse in 1901 by seventeen charter members, several drawn from the Welcome community in Austin County. A 1906 union with neighboring Cyclone Lutherans gave the young congregation the numbers to call its first resident pastor and acquire a former Methodist chapel for worship. A larger sanctuary followed in 1924 as the rural congregation grew.

Teague, TX

One of the oldest congregations in Freestone County, Salem Predestinarian Baptist Church was founded in December 1853 by the Lee families, with elders Thomas Dossey and C. T. Echols certifying its constitution. A five-acre site donated by the McSwane family held first a log meetinghouse, later a frame building, and eventually the present chapel raised in 1961. Elder Dossey gave the church its name.

Montague, TX

Settlers began arriving in the Bethel community in the 1870s, opening the Salona School by 1881 and, in 1889, setting aside land for a burial ground. A Civil War veteran was among the first laid to rest here in 1890, followed by many more, and beginning in 1897 residents gathered each May to tend the graves and share a potluck—a Decoration Day tradition still kept on the first Sunday of May. As the school consolidated and the settlement faded, the cemetery remained the community's living memory.

Jacksboro, TX

James N. Jonas and his wife Caroline settled the Salt Creek community around 1876. Two years later, when a child in a wagon-traveling family died nearby, the Jonases offered a place on their land to bury it — and later gave acreage for a full community cemetery, also known as Dark Corner. The historic Salt Creek schoolhouse still stands to the east and hosts the cemetery association's annual workday. Among nearly 200 graves are veterans reaching from the U.S.-Mexico War to the Korean conflict.

Nephi, UT

This monument honors the pioneers who settled along Salt Creek in the Nephi area of central Utah, part of the Mormon colonization that spread through the territory in the years after 1847. Called to establish farming communities in the arid Great Basin, these families dug irrigation ditches and raised homes on a demanding frontier.

San Elizario, TX

For generations, the salt lakes near San Elizario had been a shared resource that Hispanic communities of the El Paso valley gathered from freely. When private interests moved to control access in the 1870s, resentment boiled over into the El Paso Salt War of 1877, a violent clash that cost many lives and much property. The conflict remains one of the most turbulent episodes in the history of the far West Texas borderlands.

San Elizario, TX

For generations, the salt lakes east of El Paso were a free resource anyone could gather from — until private claims collided with community right in the 1877 Salt War. After former judge Charles Howard shot his rival Luis Cardis over control of the beds, an enraged mob killed Howard and several state troopers protecting him at San Elizario. The violence drew federal and state investigators and led directly to the re-establishment of Fort Bliss in 1878.

Thorndale, TX

Settled in the 1860s and named for a nearby creek where cattle found salt licks, the Salty community grew up around a Methodist church, a cemetery, and a school by the late 1870s. Barbed-wire fencing sparked violence here in the 1880s, but the settlement matured into a precinct with stores, doctors, and its own annual singing convention founded around 1900 — a tradition that outlived the stores and school themselves.

Mesquite, TX

On an April day in 1878, the notorious outlaw Sam Bass and his gang stopped a Texas & Pacific train near Mesquite and made off with $152—never suspecting a hidden shipment of $30,000 rode aboard. Bass had become one of the most hunted men in Texas, and his luck ran out just months later when Texas Rangers gunned him down during a planned bank robbery. His brief, violent career made him a fixture of frontier legend.

Round Rock, TX

An orphaned Indiana youth who drifted to Texas, Sam Bass won early fame racing his "Denton Mare" before turning to gambling and train robbery, famously scattering gold among those who sheltered him from the law. In July 1878 he rode into Round Rock intending to rob a bank, only to be gunned down by Texas Rangers. Refusing to the end to name his accomplices, he passed into legend as a subject of nineteenth-century ballads and lies buried in the old Round Rock Cemetery.

Huntsville, TX

Born in Virginia in 1793 and raised in Tennessee, Sam Houston fought under Andrew Jackson in the War of 1812 and rose to serve in Congress and as Tennessee's governor before heading west. Settling in Nacogdoches, he led the Army of the Republic to victory at San Jacinto in 1836, served twice as president of the Republic of Texas and later as U.S. senator and governor, and in 1861 refused to swear loyalty to the Confederacy, dying at Huntsville in 1863.

Liberty, TX

From 1833 until his death in 1863, Sam Houston maintained a deep tie to Liberty County, closing nine land deals covering nearly 20,000 acres and practicing law from an office facing the courthouse square. Even as he served as president of the Republic and later U.S. senator, he worshipped with his wife Margaret's Baptist congregation nearby.

San Augustine, TX

Sam Houston made San Augustine his own for three decades, opening a law practice on this site and using 'The Redlands' as a base for business, residence, and refuge. He is said to have recovered here from the Battle of San Jacinto and issued his battle report from the town; after his presidency of the Republic, its voters sent him to the Texas House. His divorce, his marriage to Margaret Lea, and much of his personal drama unfolded amid a community that championed him early.

Gonzales County, TX

In March 1836, as Santa Anna's army pushed east after the fall of the Alamo, General Sam Houston pitched his headquarters beneath a great oak near Gonzales during the anxious retreat known as the Runaway Scrape. Here his small, ragged force gathered volunteers streaming in from the eastern settlements. From this camp they marched on toward the decisive fight at San Jacinto.

Cochran, TX

In the anxious weeks after the fall of the Alamo and the Goliad massacre in the spring of 1836, Sam Houston's outnumbered Texian army fell back east and made camp along the Brazos. Here Houston drilled his raw recruits, absorbed fresh reinforcements and supplies, and took delivery of the "Twin Sisters" cannon that would soon see action. From this staging ground he crossed the river and marched to the decisive victory at San Jacinto on April 21.

Nacogdoches, TX

When Sam Houston left Washington for Texas in late 1832, he chose Nacogdoches as his first home, drawn by fellow Tennesseans and Masons like Adolphus Sterne and Henry Raguet. He boarded with the Sternes, set up a law practice, and was baptized Catholic so he could own property under Mexican law. From here he was elected a delegate to the conventions that led toward revolution, and his lifelong friendship with Thomas J. Rusk — later a fellow Texas senator — was forged in this town.

Nacogdoches, TX

This 1880 farmhouse is a fine example of the East Texas homestead, originally boasting five rooms, four porches, and an enclosed dog-trot passage. It was built for farmer Samuel Pharr Smith and his wife Mary by her brother, a local cabinetmaker who also crafted the woodwork and some of the furniture. Sam and Mary raised twelve children here and lived in the house until they both died in 1941, a testament to the rooted, self-sufficient life of a Texas farm family.

Bonham, TX

Sam Rayburn came to Texas with his family as a boy in 1887 and rose from the state legislature to one of the most powerful posts in American government. Across 25 straight terms in the U.S. House, he served alongside eight presidents and held the Speaker's gavel for 17 years — longer than anyone before him. When he died in 1961, some 30,000 mourners, including four presidents, came to his funeral in Bonham.

Mineral Wells, TX

In March 1866, five-year-old Sam Savage survived a Comanche raid on his father's Parker County farm that killed his father Bolin and his uncle James; Sam, his brother, and a cousin were carried off into captivity. After a posse failed to overtake the raiders, trader John Fields located the children that November and ransomed them for $414 at Fort Arbuckle. Sam went on to become a rancher, farmer, and champion fiddler, living to 90 and often recounting the months he spent learning the Comanche language and the bow before his return.

Canyon, TX

Sam Wood raised this cabin in 1887 at Hog Town, now a Panhandle ghost town. A Union Civil War veteran, buffalo hunter, and Indian scout, Wood was father of the bride in the first marriage recorded in the Panhandle, held at Fort Elliott in 1877, and his cabin once sheltered six families during an Indian scare. Moved and restored in 1954, it survives as a rare relic of frontier life on the high plains.

Decatur, TX

Tennessee-born pioneer Sam Woody (1826–1920) reached Texas in the 1840s and brought his family to Wise County in 1854, where friends and kin raised this log cabin near Deep Creek in a single day. As the area's first dwelling it became a hub of frontier hospitality, a trading spot where Native people exchanged buffalo robes and moccasins for corn, and a haven where travelers were never turned away. Woody helped guard the settlements as a ranger and served in the Confederate army during the Civil War.

Highlands, TX

Chartered in 1859 and named for Henry Sampson, a South Carolina transplant who rose to grand master of the Grand Lodge of Texas, this lodge began in a purpose-built log cabin near Lynchburg. Fire and a succession of Gulf Coast hurricanes drove the lodge from Lynchburg to Crosby and finally to Highlands in 1951, where it turned increasingly toward community service. Its members mark local life through parades, fundraisers, and charity that still anchor the town today.