Alexander Beaton

Beaton's best-remembered fight was against a gift. In 1873 Corsicana voters approved, by about 70 percent, an ordinance issuing $100,000 in bonds to give the Methodist Church in return for a denominational university in town. Beaton, Captain James Garitty and Major A. M. Lea led property owners against it, and the bonds were rescinded and never issued. A Navarro County biography says the school went to Georgetown and is now Southwestern University, and that Beaton, a First Methodist member, later said nothing pleased him more than the ordinance's defeat.

What the plaque says

Alexander Beaton A native of Scotland, Alexander Beaton came to the United States in 1843. He migrated to Texas in 1848 after serving in the U.S. Army during the Mexican War. In 1850 he settled in Corsicana and began the practice of law. He was chairman of the finance committee to promote the routing of the Houston & Texas Central Railroad through Corsicana in 1871. Because of his efforts to bring the railroad to town, Beaton Street was named in his honor. Beaton was a Mason, a member of the First Methodist Church, and an amateur geologist. He married Elizabeth Jane McKinney and had 3 children. (1985)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Petroleum Industry Park — 0.4 mi
  The pipes and drilling tower mark where a city water well struck oil on June 9, 1894, the start of the first Texas field to produce oil and gas in important quantities.
• Blind Lemon Memorial Cemetery — 20 mi
  The Freestone County grave of the Texas blues singer Blind Lemon Jefferson, who recorded for Paramount in Chicago from 1926 and died there in December 1929.
• Ellis County Courthouse — 30 mi
  J. Riely Gordon's courthouse of 1897 in Pecos red sandstone and pink granite, with twenty-one carved stone faces and two cornerstones left by a quarrel over its building.

More markers nearby

• Corsicana City Jail of 1908 — steps away
• The First National Bank of Corsicana — steps away
• The Molloy Hotel — steps away
• Site of Merchants Opera House — steps away