Congressman Sam Rayburn

The plaque tells the national career, and the Handbook of Texas tells what Rayburn carried home. His district gained rural electrification, farm-to-market roads, Lake Texoma, Lavon Lake and several smaller lakes, a Veterans Administration hospital in McKinney, the Bonham Veterans Domiciliary, Perrin Field near Sherman and Jones Field near Bonham. In 1949 he won the $10,000 Collier's award, and the money endowed the Sam Rayburn Library, finished in Bonham in 1957. The Handbook says he kept in close touch with rural constituents and worked on their individual problems.

What the plaque says

Congressman Sam Rayburn Born in Tennessee on Jan. 6, 1882, Samuel Taliaferro Rayburn came to north Texas with his parents in 1887. His political career began in 1906 with his election to the Texas House of Representatives, where he was Speaker of the 1911-13 Session. Rayburn was elected to the U.S. Congress from the 4th District in 1912, the first of his 25 consecutive terms there. Rising quickly to a leadership position, he was chairman of the Democratic party caucus in 1921. As head of the House Interstate and Foreign Commerce Committee (1931-37) and then Majority Leader (1937-40), Rayburn sponsored much of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal legislation. On Sept. 16, 1940 Rayburn was elected Speaker of the House of Representatives. Except for the 80th (1947-49) and 83rd (1953-55) Congresses, when he was Minority Leader, Rayburn held the speakership until 1961, longer than anyone in the nation's history. A party leader as well, he was chairman of the Democratic National Conventions of 1948, 1952, and 1956. Rayburn died on Nov. 16, 1961, and Presidents Harry S Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, and John F. Kennedy, along with Lyndon B. Johnson, were among national figures at his funeral. He is buried in Willow Wild Cemetery. (1975)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Sam Rayburn House State Historic Site — 0.4 mi
  The two-story farmhouse west of Bonham that the longtime Speaker of the House built in 1916 and kept as his home, left as he lived in it and open as a museum since 1975.
• Eisenhower Birthplace State Historic Site — 22 mi
  The small frame house beside the Katy tracks in Denison where Dwight Eisenhower was born in 1890, bought by townspeople in 1946 and given to Texas in 1958.
• Eisenhower State Park — 28 mi
  A bluff-top park on Lake Texoma opened in 1958 on land leased from the Corps of Engineers, in the Red River country of Fort Johnson, Colbert's Ferry and the Butterfield stages.

More markers nearby

• Dr. Tom Douglas Spies — 0.9 mi
• John P. Simpson — 1.0 mi
• Military Headquarters Northern Sub-District of Texas, C.S.A. — 1.1 mi
• Sam Rayburn — 1.1 mi