Alice Gray Hamblen

A Salado Historical Society biography says William and Alice Hamblen raised sixteen children after settling in Salado in 1868. After William died in 1902, Alice managed a large estate and housed relatives' children so they could attend Salado College. When a fire left the Salado Public School building unsafe, she offered the Hamblen homestead as the site of a new school. The society says the family home came down in 1924 to make way for the red brick schoolhouse, and the Hamblen family cemetery behind it is a designated Texas Historic Cemetery.

What the plaque says

Alice Gray Hamblen Alice Gray Hamblen, born March 14, 1846, in Mississippi, and her husband, William Kroger Hamblen (1817-1902), moved to Salado in 1868 and quickly became involved with the local private school, Salado College. Alice was passionate about the importance of education for young people and even provided room and board to children of family members so they could attend the school. When the college building and property were donated to the Salado Public School District in 1919 and the building was later deemed unsafe in 1924, Alice offered the Hamblen family homestead as a site for the new Salado Public School. Alice died in 1932, but her contributions to Salado remain. (2016)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Temple Railroad and Heritage Museum — 15 mi
  The Santa Fe depot of 1911 in a railroad town that began in 1880 as a construction camp, now a museum with locomotives and cars parked beside the active rail yard.
• Williamson County Courthouse — 23 mi
  The fifth Williamson County courthouse, a Beaux Arts building by C. H. Page, rises over a Georgetown square of more than 50 Victorian-era buildings.
• Inner Space Cavern — 25 mi
  A Georgetown cave found in 1963 when highway engineers drilled test holes, holding Pleistocene fossils and 72-degree rooms that visitors reach by an artificial tunnel.

More markers nearby

• Dodd's Creek Bridge — 0.3 mi
• Home of Wellborn Barton — 0.3 mi
• West Salado Cemetery — 0.4 mi
• Home of Orville Thomas Tyler — 0.4 mi