First County Agricultural Extension Agent

Smith County's farm crisis came after a boom. AgriLife Today says the Cotton Belt Railroad reported that Smith County sent 35 percent of the fruits and vegetables leaving Texas, but boll weevils, other pests and diseases cut yields. William C. Stallings was in his sixties, a Methodist minister, corn breeder and farmer from the Dixie community. The Handbook of Texas says Tyler businessmen hired him on November 12, 1906, as the first county agent in the nation to supervise a single county. He died in 1916 at 74.

What the plaque says

First County Agricultural Extension Agent At a time of low crop production and depressed farm economy, Smith County became the birthplace of the County Agricultural Agent concept. This occurred in an historic meeting Nov. 12, 1906, in an opera house near this site. Present were Dr. Seaman A. Knapp of the United States Department of Agriculture, County Judge S. A. Lindsey, and some 44 local leaders-- many belonging to the Tyler Commercial Club which sought to underwrite farm improvement. Smith County that day appointed Wm. C. Stallings (1842-1916) the first county agent in Texas and the first in the nation to serve only one county. Three years earlier the first cooperative farm demonstration program was begun on the Walter C. Porter property, Kaufman County. That successful application of scientific farming operations and appointment of Stallings (an outstanding farmer of the Dixie community, west of Tyler) were first steps toward establishment of the County Agricultural Agents' system, now known the world over as the Cooperative Extension Service. Today its educational programs further development of agricultural and human resources in both rural and urban areas. (1971)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Goodman-LeGrand House and Museum — 0.3 mi
  A Tyler house begun in 1859 as four rooms, enlarged by the Goodman family over 73 years, and left to the city in 1939 with its furnishings, in a garden that fills a city block.
• Tyler Rose Garden and Rose Museum — 1.3 mi
  More than 38,000 rose bushes of about 600 cultivars in a free city garden, beside a museum of the Texas Rose Festival, which began in 1933, and of the rose industry.
• Camp Ford Historic Park — 3.6 mi
  A free county park north of Tyler on the site of the largest Confederate prison camp west of the Mississippi, with a kiosk, an interpretive trail and a historical society museum downtown.
• Tyler State Park — 9.1 mi
  A 985-acre park eight miles north of Tyler, built by the Civilian Conservation Corps from 1935 to 1941 around a 64-acre spring-fed lake, with more than 13 miles of trails.

More markers nearby

• Smith County, C. S. A. — steps away
• City of Tyler — steps away
• Tyler Commercial College — steps away
• Henry Miller Morgan — steps away