Abner Hugh Cook

Cook seems to have apprenticed at Salisbury, North Carolina, under Samuel Lemly, a master builder. At twenty-one he went to Macon, Georgia, where he may have worked on two Greek Revival buildings by Elam Alexander, and after the panic of 1837 he moved to Nashville, taking careful note of Andrew Jackson's Hermitage. In Austin he first partnered with Heman Ward, a New York carpenter, and in October 1839 he and five others founded the city's first church; he built its log meetinghouse himself. He supervised building the state penitentiary at Huntsville from 1848 to 1850.

What the plaque says

Abner Hugh Cook (Mar. 20, 1814 - Feb. 21, 1884) A native of North Carolina, Abner Cook came to the newly created capital city of Austin in 1839 with a skill in design and construction that soon earned him the title of master builder. Working as architect, engineer, and contractor, Cook produced some of the finest public buildings and Greek Revival homes in Texas, including the Governor's Mansion and the Neill-Cochran House (2310 San Gabriel, Austin). A charter member of Austin's First Presbyterian Church, Abner Cook died soon after completing work on the Old Main building (now razed) on the University of Texas campus. (1985)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• George Washington Carver Museum — 0.4 mi
  East Austin's museum of Black history and culture, grown from a segregated branch library moved across town in 1933, with a permanent exhibit on Juneteenth at its core.
• Texas State Cemetery — 0.6 mi
  A hill east of the Capitol that began with one general's grave in 1851 and now holds Stephen F. Austin, governors, Barbara Jordan and more than 2,000 Confederate veterans and widows.
• French Legation State Historic Site — 0.7 mi
  A raised pine house built in 1840 and 1841 for France's envoy to the Republic of Texas, who left Austin in a rage over a neighbor's pigs before it was finished.
• LBJ Presidential Library — 0.7 mi
  A ten-story travertine archive on the University of Texas campus holding 45 million pages from a presidency of civil rights laws, the War on Poverty and Vietnam.

More markers nearby

• Andrew Jackson Hamilton — steps away
• Susanna W. Dickinson — steps away
• Swante Palm — steps away
• John Crittenden Duval — steps away