Clarksville

The land had been part of Governor Elisha M. Pease's plantation. Charles Clark, born Charles Griffin, bought his two acres from Confederate general Nathan G. Shelley and divided them among other freedmen. Leroy Robertson ran a community store, and the school had forty-seven pupils in 1896. Early in the twentieth century Austin's city policy aimed to concentrate Black residents in the east. The school board closed the Clarksville school in 1918, and the city's 1928 master plan proposed services in East Austin "as an incentive to draw the Negro population to this area." Most Clarksville residents refused to move.

What the plaque says

Clarksville Historic Black neighborhood. Settled in 1871 when Charles Clark, a freedman, bought two acres of land on present Tenth Street. This formed the nucleus of the community that Clark, according to tradition, wanted to start for his people. For years Clarksville lay in a wilderness on the outskirts of Austin, crossed only by a few country roads. Gradually it grew into a closely knit village, with activities centering on the Sweet Home Baptist Church. At first members met in the home of Mrs. Mary Smith. Then, in 1882, they purchased this site. Religious fervor was strong in those days, and the residents often stood on their porches at dawn to begin the day with a hymn. The first church building was erected in the 1880s; present (fourth) one in 1935. Among Clarksville's distinguished citizens was Elias Mayes, who served in the Texas Legislature in 1879 and 1889. One of the first ministers of Sweet Home, The Rev. Jacob Fontaine, was instrumental in unifying Negro Baptist churches in Austin and started the first Negro newspaper, "The Gold Dollar," in the city. As of 1973, Clarksville encompassed over 9 square blocks, bounded by Tenth, West Lynn, and Waterston streets and the Missouri-Pacific Railroad tracks. (1973)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Barton Springs Pool — 1.3 mi
  A three-acre pool in the bed of Barton Creek, fed by the fourth-largest spring in Texas at 68 to 70 degrees, and shared with an endangered salamander found almost nowhere else.
• Harry Ransom Center — 1.3 mi
  The University of Texas archive where a Gutenberg Bible and the earliest surviving camera photograph are always on view, free, beside the papers of Watergate and the movies.
• Texas State Capitol — 1.4 mi
  Austin's fourth statehouse, a Renaissance Revival capitol of 1888 that stands 311 feet to its Goddess of Liberty and was restored after the 1983 fire.
• Bullock Texas State History Museum — 1.4 mi
  The state's history museum at the head of Congress Avenue, built around the hull of La Salle's ship La Belle, raised from Matagorda Bay with 1.8 million artifacts.

More markers nearby

• Judge Calvin M. Cureton — 0.6 mi
• Travis County — 0.7 mi
• Site of Edward Mandell House Home — 1.0 mi
• Pease School — 1.0 mi