Ephraim Merrill Daggett

Daggett's best-documented gift to the town was land. When the Texas and Pacific Railway planned its line through Fort Worth, the Handbook of Texas says he donated ninety-six acres for a depot and tracks. Before that he had been an Indian trader in Chicago and a Regulator in the Regulator-Moderator War in Shelby County, then served in the Mexican War under Jack Hays. After the railroad arrived he gave most of his time to promoting the town. In 1878 he ran for Congress on the Greenback ticket and lost. He died in Fort Worth in April 1883.

What the plaque says

Ephraim Merrill Daggett Canadian born Ephraim Merrill Daggett was reared on a farm in Indiana. He traded with the Indians at Fort Dearborn (Chicago) in the early 1830s then moved to Shelby County, Republic of Texas, in 1838. There he and his family became involved in the East Texas Regulator-Moderator feud (1839-1844). He later served as a Captain in the Mexican War of 1846. While serving as State Legislator from Shelby County (1851-53), he established a mercantile business and a hotel in the frontier town of Fort Worth. In 1854 he moved his family here and soon thereafter began purchasing large tracts of Tarrant County real estate. Daggett used his influence as a former legislator to help secure Fort Worth's selection as County Seat in 1860. After serving as Brigadier General during the Civil War, he engaged in the mercantile and cattle business in Fort Worth. In 1873 Daggett's likeness was chosen to adorn the City's first seal. His role in bringing the Texas & Pacific Railroad here in 1876, developing a downtown district, and in helping transform Fort Worth from an abandoned military post to a center of commerce earned Daggett reknown as "The Father of Fort Worth". He is buried in the City's Pioneer's Cemetery. (1993)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Tarrant County Courthouse — 0.5 mi
  A pink-granite courthouse of 1895 on the bluff where the Army set up Fort Worth in 1849, in a county named for the man who led the 1841 attack on the Native villages of Village Creek.
• Kimbell Art Museum — 2.1 mi
  Louis Kahn's cycloid-vaulted museum of 1972, built from Kay Kimbell's bequest and joined in 2013 by Renzo Piano's pavilion for the exhibitions the Kahn galleries could not hold.
• National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame — 2.4 mi
  A hall of fame begun in Hereford in 1975 to honor rodeo women, widened in 1977 to Western heritage, and housed in Fort Worth's Cultural District since 2002.
• Fort Worth Stockyards — 2.8 mi
  The brick-street cattle market where Armour and Swift built packing plants in 1902, now a National Register district with a Coliseum, a museum and a longhorn drive twice a day.

More markers nearby

• Fort Worth Library — steps away
• General William Jenkins Worth (1794-1849) — steps away
• John Peter Smith — steps away
• Amon G. Carter — steps away