Alma Ward Hamrick

Alma Ward's birthplace, Pearl, lies twenty-two miles west of Gatesville in northwest Coryell County. Its settlers asked for a post office named Swayback, for a nearby mountain, but a clerical error made it Wayback in 1884, and on March 28, 1890, the community was renamed for Pearl Davenport, a storekeeper's son. In the early 1900s three doctors there waged a price war that brought the cost of delivering a baby down to $2.50. Until the mid-1920s Pearl's churches held ten-day revivals every summer, and a 1917 bond built the four-room brick Pearl School.

What the plaque says

ALMA WARD HAMRICK (1896-1974) BORN IN PEARL (CORYELL CO.), ALMA WARD GRADUATED IN GOLDTHWAITE AND ATTENDED COLLEGE IN DENTON, EARNING A TEACHING CERTIFICATE c. 1916. SHE MARRIED JAMES L. HAMRICK IN 1919; THE COUPLE HAD TWO DAUGHTERS. ALMA TAUGHT IN EASTLAND, McCULLOCH AND SAN SABA COUNTIES FOR 15 YEARS AND HAD A LONG CAREER AS A WRITER. HER ARTICLES WERE PUBLISHED IN NEWSPAPERS AND INTERNATIONAL PUBLICATIONS. IN 1936 SHE HELPED FOUND THE SAN SABA GARDEN CLUB, AND WAS INSTRUMENTAL IN SAVING SAN SABA'S HISTORIC MILL. SHE CHAIRED THE COUNTY'S CENTENNIAL COMMITTEE (1956) AND HISTORICAL SURVEY COMMITTEE (1962) AND RESEARCHED 19 STATE HISTORICAL MARKERS. HER BOOK THE CALL OF THE SAN SABA (1940) REMAINS A SEMINAL WORK IN LOCAL HISTORY. 175 YEARS OF TEXAS INDEPENDENCE * 1836-2011

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Colorado Bend State Park — 17 mi
  Old ranch country on the Colorado above Lake Buchanan, where a spring-fed creek drops 70 feet over fern-covered travertine at Gorman Falls.

More markers nearby

• San Saba County — steps away
• United Confederate Veterans William P. Rogers Camp No. 322 — 0.2 mi
• Camp McMillan, C.S.A., Texas Civil War Frontier Defense — 0.2 mi
• Edmond E. Risien, Pecan Pioneer — 0.2 mi