Bellville High School

The senator at the 1939 dedication was Tom Connally, born in 1877 on a McLennan County farm and remembered as the best showman in the Senate. He won his seat in 1928 by urging voters to turn out Earle B. Mayfield, the Klan-backed incumbent, and stood with the New Deal through Roosevelt's first term. He also led the filibuster against an antilynching bill in 1937 and another against repealing the poll tax in 1942. He chaired the Foreign Relations Committee for most of 1941 to 1953 and was one of the few Americans who devised the United Nations.

What the plaque says

Bellville High School Bellville's 1918 two-story brick schoolhouse served all grades, but by the 1930s had overcrowding and structural problems. An initial application for funds from the Public Works Administration (PWA), a federal New Deal program, was denied in 1936. After H.F. Granau led 40 citizens in signing a petition, the board of trustees voted to issue bonds for $50,000, and a second application to the PWA secured an additional $58,000. Blum E. Hester was the architect and A.N. Evans was the contractor for a new high school and gymnasium (also used as an auditorium), which opened in 1939 with U.S. Senator Tom Connally making the dedicatory address. The facility was the high school until 1970, then served other grades and school used until being renovated in 2006 as the school district's administration building and BISD school museum. (2018)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• San Felipe de Austin State Historic Site — 14 mi
  Stephen F. Austin's colonial capital on a Brazos bluff, the town of the Consultation and the first Texas newspapers, burned by its own garrison in the Runaway Scrape of 1836.
• Attwater Prairie Chicken National Wildlife Refuge — 20 mi
  Ten thousand acres of native coastal prairie northeast of Eagle Lake, kept for a critically endangered grouse, many of whose birds are hatched in captivity and released here.
• Stafford Opera House — 24 mi
  A cattleman's bank and theater of 1886 on the Columbus square, in a river town Sam Houston burned in 1836 and a county marked by a long feud and a 1935 lynching.
• Round Top and Festival Hill — 28 mi
  A German village on the old La Bahía Road, named for a house tower, with an 1867 stone church, a Fourth of July kept since 1851 and a concert hall a pianist built without blueprints.

More markers nearby

• Early History of Bellville Methodist Church — 0.3 mi
• Bellville — 0.4 mi
• First National Bank of Bellville — 0.4 mi
• Michael Robert Pilley — 0.4 mi