Milam County, Texas
Rockdale is home to 25 official Texas Historical Commission markers — each one telling a piece of the city’s story. Browse the markers below, then find them on the map and discover more nearby with RoadHistorical.
Established by Franciscan missionaries in 1749 with the hope of civilizing and christianizing the Coco, Mayeye, Orcoquiza, Karankawa, and other tribes of Indians. The martyrdom of Padre Jose Ganzabal and the…
View on map ↗Texas War for Independence veteran. He helped destroy Vince's Bridge, April 21, 1836. Erected by the State of Texas 1962.
View on map ↗Earliest Episcopal services in Rockdale were held in 1875 in a store, where other faiths also worshiped. On Dec. 19, 1876, Bishop Alexander Gregg organized St. Thomas Mission, and in 1879 this site was bought with funds…
View on map ↗Organized in 1887, this church was first served by the Rev. A. J. Bush, Sr. (1846-1920), a Civil War veteran who was instrumental in establishing Christian churches in many areas of the state. Previous buildings on this…
View on map ↗Among the first Anglo American settlers to come to Texas with colonizer Stephen F. Austin, Daniel (b. 1795) and Precilla Boatwright (b. 1803) Gilleland were members of Austin's Old Three Hundred colony. The couple and…
View on map ↗The son of Andrew and Laura Perry, George Sessions Perry was born May 5, 1910, in Rockdale. In 1933, he married Claire Hodges of Beaumont. Four years later, he published the first in a long line of fiction and…
View on map ↗Pleasant Grove Baptist Church, organized in 1872 (4.5 mi. W), and Fellowship Baptist Church, formed about 1877 in Minerva (2 mi. N), merged in 1895 to form Mount Zion Baptist Church. The Rev. N. J. Dyer served as first…
View on map ↗The community of Bushdale was founded in this area of Milam County by German immigrants in the 1870s. Within ten years the population of the county doubled and the Bushdale area developed into a thriving farming…
View on map ↗FM 908
View on map ↗The community of Rockdale sprang up around a railroad camp in 1873. The Rev. B. B. Baxter arrived in 1874 and established a Baptist church with 18 charter members. The Rev. Mr. Baxter conducted services in a room above…
View on map ↗Rockdale owes its founding to the International & Great Northern rail line, along which the town was laid out in 1873-74. The railroad gave area farmers access to markets for their crops, and Rockdale became a shipping…
View on map ↗The Mundine Hotel stood on this site from its construction in 1880 until its destruction by fire in 1888. Completed six years after Rockdale incorporated along the International & Great Northern rail line, the hotel was…
View on map ↗La Recluta and La Escuelita Jose Leal received six leagues of land in this area in 1833. In 1867, coal was discovered, and the railroad reached Rockdale in 1874. Not until 1890 did the first coal mine, owned by Herman…
View on map ↗Rockdale began as a railroad town in 1874 along a new line of the International & Great Northern. It grew quickly as a shipping point and soon boasted churches, schools, cotton gins, grist mills, an opera house, a bank…
View on map ↗The International & Great Northern Railroad reached the new town of Rockdale in January 1874. Among the early residents were brothers Benjamin and Joseph Lowenstein, who opened a mercantile from a tent before the…
View on map ↗Three rail lines largely contributed to Rockdale's early commercial development, and of the three, the International & Great Northern (I&GN) made the biggest impact. This former I&GN passenger depot opened in 1906. It…
View on map ↗In January 1909, Mary Ann (Coffield) Perry organized the Matinee Musical Club on the front porch of her home at this site. Pearl Cauthon served as the first president of the club, which met regularly to study and…
View on map ↗Members established this church in 1872, under the guidance of the Rev. Riley Williams. Though buildings have changed, the congregation still gather son the same land they met on that year. Members have emphasized…
View on map ↗Originally named Pleasant Grove Cemetery, this burial ground was at first associated with the Pleasant Grove Community. The settlement's school was also once located on this site. In 1872, residents organized the…
View on map ↗The cemetery at this site was first used as a burial ground in the 1850s, but the land was not formally set aside for this purpose until a 1902 warranty deed noted “one acre of land . . . to be used exclusively as a…
View on map ↗THE CROSSING OVER THE SAN XAVIER (SAN GABRIEL) RIVER IN MILAM COUNTY HAS BEEN USED AS A PASSAGEWAY FOR CENTURIES. EVIDENCE SHOWS THAT THE AREA HAS BEEN INHABITED BY HUMANS FOR AT LEAST 10,000 YEARS. DURING THE…
View on map ↗In 1947, E. L. Bryan and the Foy Arrington family bought a surplus Quonset Hut, one of thousands of the all-purpose metal buildings made during World War II. The hut was moved to Rockdale to become the core of the…
View on map ↗In the first decades of the twentieth century, affordable roadside accommodations began with campsites equipped with amenities. These eventually developed into cottage style courts in the 1920s. Nathan Monroe (N.M.)…
View on map ↗Beginning in the late 1920s, the use of petrified wood in construction became popular in Texas and throughout the American Southwest. This was due in part to the design of National Park Service buildings in the West…
View on map ↗marker pending
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