Biardstown School

After the log-cabin schools, the Handbook of Texas follows Biardstown into the twentieth century. A district school was organized by 1892, and in 1896 it enrolled seventy-seven students under one teacher. The town had a telephone exchange by 1914. Its population stood at 163 from 1925 through the 1940s, peaked at 250 in 1950, and had fallen to seventy-five by 1974, when most residents were part-time farmers working in Paris. The school building outlasted the town's businesses; none were reported in 1970.

What the plaque says

Biardstown School The history of schools in Biardstown is closely associated with the Biard family, early settlers of the area. The first school in the community was in the log home of William Washington Biard. In 1867 John Wilson Biard, son of William Biard, and his wife Lizzie donated land for a schoolhouse. It was replaced by a second building in 1885. The rural school became a part of the Delmar Independent School District in 1949. The Biardstown School building was converted to serve as a community center. Texas Sesquicentennial 1836 - 1986

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Eiffel Tower — 7.2 mi
  A 65-foot Eiffel Tower with a red cowboy hat, built by the local welders' union in 1993 beside Paris's Love Civic Center.
• Evergreen Cemetery — 7.9 mi
  Paris's town cemetery since 1866, with a carved-stone gallery that includes the Babcock monument in cowboy boots, and the grave of the three-year-old whose death led to the 1893 lynching of Henry Smith.
• Sam Bell Maxey House State Historic Site — 8.6 mi
  The Italian-villa-style house in Paris, finished in 1868 with a lawyer's fees, where a Confederate major general turned U.S. senator and two later generations of his family lived.
• Cooper Lake State Park — 16 mi
  Two units on Jim Chapman Lake, a Corps reservoir proposed in the late 1930s, stalled by a lawsuit until 1984 and dedicated in 1991, with a 10.5-mile equestrian trail and wildlife land around it.

More markers nearby

• Antioch Cemetery and Old Antioch Church of Christ — 0.8 mi
• Rockford Church and Cemetery — 3.2 mi
• Wilson, John William — 7.2 mi
• Thomas Wilson Stegall — 7.8 mi