Annie Webb Blanton was a suffragist, educator, and author from Texas. She wrote a series of grammar textbooks including Review Outline and Exercises in English Grammar (1903), Advanced English Grammar (1928), and The Child of the Texas One-Teacher School (1936). She was the first woman in Texas elected to statewide office as the Superintendent of Texas Public Instruction in 1918. This historical marker was placed in her honor for her contributions to education in Texas.
Jane Yelvington McCallum was one of the most prominent leaders of the women’s suffrage movement in Texas. Jane McCallum lived in this house with her husband and their five children. As a member of the Texas Joint Legislative Council, nicknamed the Petticoat Lobby, she worked for political and social reform through the Texas legislature. She was appointed to the office of Secretary of State in 1927 by Governor Dan Moody and was reappointed in 1931 by Governor Ross Sterling. While in office she discovered and had preserved an original signed copy of the Texas Declaration of Independence.
Established by the Stinson family of aviation pioneers, Stinson Airport has witnessed the history of aviation from barnstormers to jets. In the 1930s, commercial airlines began using the airport and construction of a new terminal building with Works Progress Administration funds enhanced the facility. During World War II it once again became an Army Air Corps training facility. Returned to civilian use after the war, Stinson Field became the primary general aviation airport for the city of San Antonio.
Born in Maryland in 1798, Jane H. Wilkinson moved to Mississippi after becoming an orphan and became the ward of her famous relative, General James Wilkinson, field commander of the United States Army. Jane married Dr. James Long in 1815 and later followed him on an expedition to free Texas from Spain. In 1821 her husband led his forces into battle, leaving Jane alone with their daughter Ann near Galveston. Her tenacity and strong will to survive a tough winter in spite of her husband's absence earned her the name "Mother of Texas". Her boarding house in Richmond became a place of prominent social and political activity.
Janis Joplin was an influential female singer of the 1960s known for her powerful, distinct voice and her turbulent lifestyle. Joplin rose to fame in 1967 during an appearance at a music festival in California as the lead singer of Big Brother and the Holding Company. She released two albums with the band before leaving to pursue a solo career. She appeared at the famous Woodstock festival in 1969 and released a third album in early 1970. She died of a drug overdose in October 1970, which sent shock waves through the musical world and stunned her fan base. Her childhood home still stands in Port Arthur commemorated by a Texas State Historical Marker.
Since its opening in 1976, the Babe Didrikson Zaharias Museum has worked to share the history of the most influential female athlete of the early 20th century. Ella "Babe" Didrikson dominated women's basketball, golf, and track and field from the 1930s to 1950s. The museum is free and open to the public, and includes trophies and awards that Zaharias acquired throughout her career. The museum also holds a variety of exhibits containing sports memorabilia, newspaper clippings, and photographs. Funds raised by the museum helps to fund scholarships for female student athletes at Lamar University.
Margaret “Margo” Jones, a native of Livingston, Texas, was one of the leading figures of American theater. She played a key role in the careers of many actors and playwrights including Tennessee Williams and William Inge. She directed two well-known productions, The Glass Menagerie and Inherit the Wind, on Broadway. She was an advocate for non-profit professional theaters and theater-in-the-round, and she carried out these ideas both on Broadway and in her own theater in Dallas. She died in Dallas in 1955 but her influence on the theater continues to exist today.
In the early and mid-20th century, Nacodoches was the home of notable poet and writer Karle Wilson Baker. Karle first published in 1903 with a poem in Harper’s magazine. In the 1910s she became the most frequently published poet in the Yale Review. In 1924, the Dallas News labeled her “The Poet of Quiet Things” and Southern Methodist University honored her with an honorary doctorate of letters. Her 1931 collection of poems was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. Stephen F. Austin University in Nacogdoches is the home of her historical marker, placed by the Texas State Historical Commission in 2007.
Margie Neal began her career as a teacher in 1893. In 1904 she became editor and owner of the East Texas Register newspaper and was also a leader of the women’s suffrage movement in Texas. She was the first woman appointed to the State Normal School Board of Regents in 1921. Five years later she made history as the first woman elected to the Texas State Senate. She served in several federal positions in Washington, D.C. before returning to Texas in 1945. There she was active in civic affairs until her death in 1971. A historical marker was placed in her honor in Carthage, Texas in 1988.
Bessie Coleman was the tenth of thirteen children born to tenant farmers in Atlanta, Texas. She followed her brothers to Chicago in 1915 when she was twenty-three years old and developed a love for flying. Coleman could find no one in the United States that was willing to teach an African American woman how to fly at that time, so she went to France and obtained her international flying license in 1921. Upon her return to the United States, she soon earned a reputation as an exceptional pilot by performing at air shows. Bessie Coleman died in an airplane accident in Jacksonville, Florida in 1926 and is buried near Chicago. This historical marker placed by the Texas Historical Commission commemorates her life and contribution to Texas Women’s History.
Ima Hogg, known as “The First Lady of Texas”, was an American philanthropist and a collector of the arts. She was an avid art collector and owned pieces by Picasso, Matisse, and others which she donated to the Houston Museum of Fine Arts. The discovery of oil on her family’s plantation allowed her to pursue philanthropy that largely benefited the people of Texas. She founded the Houston Child Guidance Center, the Hogg Foundation for Mental Health at the University of Texas at Austin, and the Ima Hogg Foundation which still exists today and carries on her philanthropic work. The site of her birthplace in Mineola, Texas is marked with a Texas Historical Commission subject marker.
Mame Roberts lived her entire life in or near the community of Howe, Texas. She worked as a substitute teacher in the Howe Public Schools before turning to the work that would make her famous-promoting civic improvements and the beautification of her community. Her campaign to make Howe the “prettiest little town in Texas” motivated other small Texas towns to take similar actions. Roberts' column in the local newspaper was shared and reprinted throughout the region and even attracted national attention. Mame Roberts brought fame to Howe when Eleanor and Anna Roosevelt’s national radio program named her their “Woman of the Day” on May 14, 1949. A historical marker was placed in Roberts honor in the Howe community in 2002.
A Texas Historical Marker honoring the role of Dallas women in achieving full suffrage rights for Texas women was dedicated October 14, 2010, outside the Dallas County Old Red County Courthouse. The marker is located in front of the 1892 Dallas County Courthouse, also known as the Old Red Museum.
In 1885, Dallas’ only public hospital was a small frame building on Lamar Street known as City Hospital. From 1907 to 1913, May Forster Smith, a private duty nurse, worked at the area hospitals and saw the plight of infants firsthand. She invited her fellow nurses to a meeting to identify a solution. Smith and her colleagues convinced the Dallas Graduate Nurses Association to form a baby camp to treat infants. The first camp in the Southwest and the third in the country opened on April 6, 1913, on the campus of Parkland Hospital. It was originally housed in four tents provided by the American Red Cross. Due to the generosity of charitable organizations, the camp continued to operate. In 1947, the baby camp, Bradford Hospital, Children’s Hospital, and Freeman Clinic came together as Children’s Medical Center of Dallas. Today it is one of the largest pediatric providers in the nation.
On February 8, 1900, a group of twenty-nine women from Weatherford, Texas organized the Twentieth Century Club. Later that same year the club was federated as an affiliate of the Texas Federation of Women’s Clubs. Since its beginnings, the club’s membership has bettered the community through four areas: world affairs, fine arts, home science, and green thumb. The clubhouse has been the site of political forums, weddings, anniversaries, and recitals. A historical marker was placed in front of the clubhouse, honoring its members and their activities throughout the community, in 2010.
Emma Susan Daugherty Banister was born in Forney, Texas on October 20, 1871. On September 25, 1894, she married John R. Banister, a former Texas Ranger and a special agent of the United States Treasury Department. John Banister was elected sheriff of Coleman County in 1914. On August 1, 1918, John Banister died and the commissioners of Coleman County appointed his wife to complete his term in office, making her the first woman sheriff in the United States. After her death in 1956, she was buried in Santa Anna Cemetery and a Texas Historical Commission subject marker has been placed there in her honor.
Mary Elizabeth (Mollie) Wright Armstrong was instrumental in establishing optometry as a profession in Texas during the first half of the 20th century. Mollie’s interest in optometry began when a traveling salesman fitted her with glasses that would cure her of chronic headaches. She completed an optometry degree in 1899 and opened an optical department in their family store in Brownwood. She became a leader in her profession, and her accomplishments are commemorated by this historical marker which was dedicated in 2008.
This monument marks the burial site of Davy Crockett's second wife, Elizabeth, who died in 1860 at the age of 72. The statue of Elizabeth graces the top of the monument and appears to be looking for her husband in the distance. The grave of Elizabeth Crockett is an Acton State Historical Site and maintained with support from the Texas Historical Commission. The burial plot has been categorized as a Texas State Park since 1949, making this the smallest state park in Texas.
Harriet (Hallie) Earle earned her undergraduate and graduate degrees from Baylor University, and a medical degree from Baylor College of Medicine. In 1907, Dr. Earle became the first licensed female physician in McLennan County and had her own practice in Waco, Texas from 1915 to 1948. After her retirement, she became a farmer and a weather observer for the United States Department of Commerce. She died in 1963 and is buried at Oakwood Cemetery in Waco, where a historical marker was placed in 1996 by the Texas Historical Commission for her contributions to Waco.
This Tour is a Walking Tour.
Get a QR Code for this tour
This driving tour through Texas starts at the historical marker of Annie Webb Blanton, a suffragette, educator, and author from Texas. It continues through birthplaces, burial sites, and historical markers of influential women in Texas history. The tour contains women of the arts, education, aviation, medicine, and shows the impact of women's lives on the history of Texas.
