David Hall Love

Love's gift made Fairfield. The Handbook of Texas says the townsite was 100 acres of the Redin Gainer league, and that the place was first called Mound Prairie before it became the county seat in 1850. In 1851 and 1852 the county auctioned 128 lots at prices from six dollars to $101. By September 1852 the town had three dry-goods stores, two hotels, a grocery and a jail, and a Masonic lodge was chartered in 1853. The first courthouse, built about 1852, was described as 'no better than a pigsty.' Later courthouses followed in 1854-56, 1891-92 and 1919-21.

What the plaque says

David Hall Love (January 12, 1816 - April 21, 1866) A Texas War for Independence veteran. At Battle of San Jacinto, April 21, 1836, he and 11 comrades captured 220 enemy soldiers, and on orders of Gen. Sam Houston he walked next day to Harrisburg with news of Texas victory. For military service he was granted 640 acres of bounty land, from which he later donated Fairfield townsite. He held offices in his church and as precinct justice. A native of Tennessee, he was married twice; had 8 children. (1971)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• 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.
• Confederate Reunion Grounds State Historic Site — 25 mi
  Where Limestone County Confederate veterans gathered each summer from 1888, later a water supplier in the Mexia oil boom, now a Texas Historical Commission site on the Navasota River.
• Old Fort Parker — 26 mi
  A rebuilt 1830s family stockade near the Navasota River, where a May 1836 attack killed men of the Parker settlement and took five captives, among them nine-year-old Cynthia Ann Parker.

More markers nearby

• James Bonner Rogers — steps away
• Fairfield Female College — 0.2 mi
• Butler Church Bell — 0.5 mi
• Rev. George Washington Baines — 0.5 mi