City of Giddings

The plaque credits the railroad with the town; the lots themselves belonged to William Marsh Rice's syndicate, and Rice Institute later held and sold them. Freedpeople settled here after the Civil War, and in 1883 more than fifty Black students met for classes in a church; the first Black public school went up in 1887. By 1890 Giddings had about 1,000 people, several cotton gins, an opera house and the German-language Volksblatt. The Austin chalk boom of the early 1980s brought some 300 oil businesses, and activity nearly stopped by the decade's end.

What the plaque says

City of Giddings County seat of Lee County. Named for Jabez D. Giddings (1814-78), of Washington County, one of four brothers from Pennsylvania who were Texas transportation pioneers and business leaders. The town was established as a shipping point when Houston & Texas Central Railroad (in which J. D. Giddings was a stockholder) reached here in 1871. A second and third railroad (San Antonio & Aransas Pass, 1889, and Hearne & Brazos Valley, 1913) increased city's prestige. Commission form government was adopted in 1913. A diversified economy developed. (1971)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Texas Wendish Heritage Museum — 5.3 mi
  A museum at Serbin of the Wends, a Slavic people from Lusatia whose congregation of nearly 600 crossed on the Ben Nevis in 1854, losing seventy-three to cholera on the way.
• Lake Somerville State Park and Trailway — 15 mi
  Two park units on an 11,000-acre lake between Austin and College Station, joined by a thirteen-mile trailway for hikers, cyclists and riders with primitive camps along the way.
• Round Top and Festival Hill — 17 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.
• Monument Hill and Kreische Brewery State Historic Sites — 20 mi
  A shared tomb on the Colorado River bluff for the men of the Dawson fight and the black bean lottery, beside the ruins of a German stonemason's spring-fed brewery.

More markers nearby

• Milton Garrett York, Sr. — steps away
• Lee County — steps away
• County Named for Beloved Confederate General Robert E. Lee — steps away
• First National Bank — steps away