Dr. Andrew Joseph Armstrong and Mary Maxwell Armstrong

Some of the money for the collection came from the stage. The library's blog calls Dr. Armstrong an impresario who brought more than 300 visitors to campus, including about forty poets. Carl Sandburg, Amy Lowell, Robert Frost and Edna St. Vincent Millay came in the 1920s and 1930s, and Katharine Cornell and Basil Rathbone played The Barretts of Wimpole Street at Baylor. Singers Marian Anderson and Roland Hayes also appeared. The Clio guide says he missed the Sotheby's sale of Pen Browning's effects but got the names of buyers, his starting point.

What the plaque says

Dr. Andrew Joseph Armstrong and Mary Maxwell Armstrong Andrew Joseph Armstrong (1873-1954), a native of Kentucky, was a noted scholar of the life and works of English poet Robert Browning. He held teaching positions at several colleges and universities in the early 20th century and met his future wife, Mary Maxwell (1882-1971), in 1904, when both taught English at East Texas Baptist Institute in Rusk. In 1909, Dr. Armstrong traveled to Italy, where he met Robert W. Barrett "Pen" Browning, only son of Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Dr. Armstrong and Mary Maxwell married in 1911, and in 1912, they moved to Waco when he became chair of the Baylor English Department. Pen Browning died that year without leaving a will, and in 1913, Sotheby's in London auctioned his estate, including papers and belongings of his famous parents. Dr. Armstrong arranged for an agent to attend the auction and document the disposition of each item. Aided by his wife, he embarked on a decades-long quest to acquire those and other Browning items. Dr. Armstrong donated his Browning collection to Baylor University in 1918. The Armstrongs then employed varied fundraising efforts to continue building the collection, including leading educational tours and arranging for world-class scholars, writers and entertainers to visit the Baylor campus. Plans for a separate building for the growing collection began in the 1930s, but World War II intervened. Construction began in 1948 after the Armstrongs raised over a million dollars, and the Armstrong Browning Library formally opened in 1951. Dr. Armstrong served as director until his death in 1954, and Mary Armstrong was director from 1954 to 1959. They are buried in Waco's historic Oakwood Cemetery. (2006)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Armstrong Browning Library — steps away
  A three-story Italian Renaissance library on the Baylor campus built to hold A. J. Armstrong's Browning collection, dedicated in December 1951 and now, by its own account, the world's largest of Browning material.
• Texas Ranger Hall of Fame and Museum — 0.9 mi
  The official state repository of Texas Ranger memorabilia, opened in 1968 in Fort Fisher Park on the Brazos, named for a Ranger post of 1837 whose site no one has located.
• Dr Pepper Museum — 0.9 mi
  The 1906 bottling plant of the Artesian Manufacturing and Bottling Company, built where Dr Pepper outgrew a Waco drugstore soda fountain, now the Dr Pepper Museum.
• Waco Suspension Bridge — 1.3 mi
  A Brazos crossing opened in January 1870 as the longest single-span suspension bridge west of the Mississippi, tolled until 1889, closed to vehicles in 1971 and now walked.

More markers nearby

• The Armstrong Browning Library — steps away
• Governor Patrick Morris Neff — steps away
• The Texas Collection — steps away
• R. E. B. Baylor — steps away