Applewhite Homestead

The Applewhite name here belongs to more than one family. The Applewhites who arrived in 1853 held people in slavery, and the 1860 census counted about 416 enslaved people near Post Oak, alongside about 475 white settlers. After emancipation, freedpeople formed small settlements, among them Dosiedo, in the sandy hills just west of La Vernia. The 1870 census lists Black families here under the surnames Applewhite, Brahan, Floyd, McAlister and Morgan. In June 1867 members of the Taylor family from DeWitt County murdered a freed man in La Vernia.

What the plaque says

Applewhite Homestead The family of Henry Applewhite (1630-1704), who sailed from England to Jamestown, Virginia, in 1656, remained in Virginia for several generations. Applewhite's descendant, Thomas Applewhite, was born in North Carolina in 1791 and served as a sergeant in the War of 1812. In 1842 Thomas married his second wife, Elizabeth Oglesby (1820-1898). The Applewhites, accompanied by eight slaves, moved to this area of Texas in 1853. They purchased 214 acres of farmland here in 1854 and by 1860 the Applewhites owned nine slaves, some of whom had taken the Applewhite name. According to local oral tradition, at one time the Applewhites' homestead may also have served as a brief stop for stagecoaches traversing the area along an alternate route of that part of the Chihuahua Road extending from Indianola to San Antonio. Thomas (d. 1864) and Elizabeth Applewhite are buried in La Vernia in Concrete Cemetery. A number of Applewhite families, the descendants of African Americans who established homes here during the 1860s, remained in the area for many generations. Thomas and Elizabeth Applewhite's original stone house was mostly destroyed during highway construction in the 1950s. Sesquicentennial of Texas Statehood 1845-1995

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Mission Espada and the Espada Aqueduct — 20 mi
  The southernmost San Antonio mission and the oldest Spanish aqueduct in the United States, still carrying river water over Sixmile Creek to the fields after nearly three centuries.
• Mission San Juan — 20 mi
  The mission near the river bend where the San Antonio got its name in 1691, with an unfinished church foundation and farm fields still watered by an eighteenth-century acequia.
• San Antonio Missions National Historical Park — 21 mi
  Four working parish churches on the Mission Trail south of downtown, with the visitor center at Mission San Jose, the Queen of the Missions, and the descendants who still worship there.
• Mission Concepción — 22 mi
  A stone church dedicated in 1755 that has never fallen into ruin, its convento ceilings still painted, and the ground where the Texas Revolution's fight for San Antonio began.

More markers nearby

• La Vernia — 0.6 mi
• Suttles Pottery — 0.6 mi
• Immanuel Lutheran Church — 0.9 mi
• Cibolo Crossing on the Gonzales Road — 1.8 mi