Connie Hagar

Hagar trained in music, studying voice and piano at Forest Park College in St. Louis, but turned down work as a professional singer as improper. At Rockport she added more than twenty species to the state's bird list, discovered the yearly movement of nine kinds of hummingbirds down the coast and reported more than 500 species in the area. She was under five feet tall and birded in starched linen; Alfred Eisenstaedt, photographing her for Life in 1956, complained that she did not look like a bird-watcher.

What the plaque says

Connie Hagar (June 14, 1886 - November 29, 1973) Born Conger Neblett in Corsicana, and married to Jack Hagar in 1926, Connie Hagar received early training as a musician. She and her sister became interested in birds and worked as volunteers with the U.S. Biological Survey. The Hagars moved to Rockport in 1935, shortly after Connie made her first visit here. She became a self-taught authority on Texas birds, and her expertise was sought by professionals and amateur ornithologists from around the world. In 1945 the Texas Legislature designated this waterfront property as the Connie Hagar Wildlife Sanctuary. (1990)

Where it stands

More markers nearby

• Rockport — 0.5 mi
• Aransas County — 0.5 mi
• First National Bank of Rockport — 0.7 mi
• Rockport Marine Laboratory — 0.9 mi