Alexander Cockrell_Sarah Horton Cockrell

Sarah Cockrell's ledgers outlasted her husband's. Alexander Cockrell could not read or write, the Handbook of Texas says, so she kept the records, handled the correspondence and managed the money. As a widow she moved into real estate, handling fifty-three separate land deals in 1889, opening the Sarah Cockrell Addition in 1884 and, with her son Frank, commissioning the five-story Cockrell Office Building in 1885. By 1892 she owned about a quarter of downtown Dallas, and she gave land and money to found First Methodist Church.

What the plaque says

Alexander Cockrell_Sarah Horton Cockrell Alexander Cockrell (June 8, 1820 - April 3, 1858) Sarah Horton Cockrell (Jan. 13, 1819 - April 26, 1892) Alexander Cockrell came to Dallas area in 1845. After serving in the war with Mexico (1846-47), he filed on 640 acres in the Peters Colony, and married Sarah Horton on Sept. 9, 1847. Cockress operated a freight line to Houston, Jefferson, and Shreveport until 1852, when he purchased remainder of the Dallas townsite from John Neely Bryan (1810 - 1877), the "Father of Dallas." Cockrell promoted growth of the village in the mid-1850s by building a brick factory, a sawmill, and a bridge across the Trinity River, replacing a ferry he had bought from Bryan. Cockrell's influence on Dallas' prosperity ended April 3, 1858, when he met an untimely death in an altercation over an unpaid debt. Sarah Horton Cockrell became the first woman in Dallas to exert economic influence outside the home. She completed the unfinished St. Nicholas Hotel, and rebuilt it after the fire of July 8, 1860; operated the ferry after the bridge collapsed in 1858 until a new span was erected in 1872; and, added a flour mill and other businesses to the community. The Cockrells' enterprises played a vital role in the establishment of Dallas as an early regional trade center. (1973)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza — steps away
  A plow-company warehouse of 1903, identified by the Warren Commission as the building Oswald fired from, now a museum on its sixth and seventh floors above Dealey Plaza.
• Dallas Museum of Art — 0.8 mi
  A city art museum that began as the Dallas Art Association in 1903, grew up in Fair Park, and has stood in the Arts District since 1984 under a forty-foot barrel vault.
• Dallas Heritage Village at Old City Park — 1.3 mi
  Dallas's first city park, laid out around Browder's Spring in 1876, now a museum of historic buildings moved here from across North Texas, among them Millermore, a cotton planter's mansion.
• African American Museum, Dallas — 2.6 mi
  Founded in 1974 at Bishop College, a free Fair Park museum holding the Sepia photograph archive, African art and A. Maceo Smith's papers, and the story of the Hall of Negro Life.

More markers nearby

• John Neely Bryan, 1810-1877 and Margaret Beeman Bryan, 1825-1919 — steps away
• Dallas County — steps away
• A. H. Belo Corporation — steps away
• Dallas Morning News — steps away