Exum Philip Whitfield

The grave plaque lists his trades; the county records show what he built. In 1857 Whitfield put up a commercial building near the courthouse square during a downtown building boom. In September 1860 he became the Columbus Tap's first secretary, and as its president he promised track by April 22, 1861, his own birthday, a promise the cash-short line could not keep. He was an original director of the Colorado Institute, a private Columbus school that took public funds from 1876, and in 1879 he kept the county's largest peach orchard, some 5,000 trees.

What the plaque says

Exum Philip Whitfield (April 22, 1818-September 17, 1887) Columbus business leader, merchant, physician, farmer, 1858-87. President, 1861-66, Columbus Tap Railway. Served two Confederate enlistments during the Civil War, 1860s. Married (1st) M. Manerva Thompson (d. 1853); (2nd) Sara Jane Palmer. Had 12 children. (1973)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Stafford Opera House — 0.6 mi
  A cattleman's bank and theater of 1886 on the Columbus square, in a river town Sam Houston burned in 1836 and a county marked by a long feud and a 1935 lynching.
• Attwater Prairie Chicken National Wildlife Refuge — 17 mi
  Ten thousand acres of native coastal prairie northeast of Eagle Lake, kept for a critically endangered grouse, many of whose birds are hatched in captivity and released here.
• Saints Cyril and Methodius Catholic Church (Dubina) — 17 mi
  The church of Texas's first Czech settlement, under a sky-blue painted ceiling that was whitewashed in the 1950s and brought back from faint traces by its own parishioners.
• St. John the Baptist Catholic Church (Ammannsville) — 19 mi
  A wooden Carpenter Gothic church built in 1919 after storm and fire took two before it, its dusty-rose interior painted by an artist whose name was lost for decades.

More markers nearby

• Columbus' Old City Cemetery — steps away
• George Glenn — 0.4 mi
• Homesite of Fannie Baker Darden — 0.4 mi
• Ben Marshall Baker — 0.5 mi