Corsicana State Home

The home ran like a small town. The Handbook of Texas says that by 1948 it had twenty-one brick buildings and a number of frame cottages on 417 acres, and that into the 1960s it operated its own farms, dairy, creamery, laundry, cannery, store, power plant, bakery, kitchen and hospital. Older children worked part-time in those jobs for practical training. Enrollment peaked at 890 in 1932. The home was integrated in the mid-1960s and later came under the Texas Youth Commission. It served sixty-six children in 1989.

What the plaque says

Corsicana State Home Created by the 20th Legislature in 1887, the State Orphan Asylum originally provided care for orphans under age 14. State officials located the institution in Corsicana after local citizens donated over 200 acres at this site. The first students arrived in 1889, and by 1890 enrollment totaled 54. Classes met in the chapel before a school building was erected in 1889. By 1897 the institution had an independent school district. Renamed State Orphan Home before 1899, the facility housed about 400 students in 1900. Here they received academic and vocational instruction. The campus once had extensive farmlands to supply food and provide agricultural training for students. Physical facilities were enlarged as enrollment increased. During the Depression of the 1930s, residents numbered over 800. The campus school was phased out at the end of the 1955-56 academic year, and students transferred to Corsicana public schools. In 1957 the home was placed under jurisdiction of the Texas Youth Council and was renamed Corsicana State Home. Thousands of children have benefited from the care and schooling provided by the home. Prominent former students include Robert W. Calvert, Texas Supreme Court Associate Justice, 1950-61, and Chief Justice, 1961-72. (1977)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Petroleum Industry Park — 2.7 mi
  The pipes and drilling tower mark where a city water well struck oil on June 9, 1894, the start of the first Texas field to produce oil and gas in important quantities.
• Blind Lemon Memorial Cemetery — 19 mi
  The Freestone County grave of the Texas blues singer Blind Lemon Jefferson, who recorded for Paramount in Chicago from 1926 and died there in December 1929.
• Ellis County Courthouse — 29 mi
  J. Riely Gordon's courthouse of 1897 in Pecos red sandstone and pink granite, with twenty-one carved stone faces and two cornerstones left by a quarrel over its building.

More markers nearby

• Odd Fellow and Rebekah Children's Home — 0.2 mi
• 15th Texas Infantry Companies E and G — 0.6 mi
• Navarro Rifles — 0.6 mi
• James Clinton Neill — 1.8 mi