Former Waller County Post Offices

The map on this marker is a list of vanished names, and the survivors show how the railroads moved the county. Hempstead's post office opened in 1857, a year before the Houston and Texas Central arrived. At Pattison, the store-and-post-office community of Pine Grove followed the narrow-gauge terminus in 1878, and the office was Patterson's Station in 1879, Patterson in 1883 and Pattison only in 1916. Waller's opened within a month of Faulkner's January 1884 plat, and Brookshire's was running by 1893, after the Katy line reached the prairie.

What the plaque says

Former Waller County Post Offices Before the age of modern communication, the postal system was a vital link between isolated rural settlements. Early Waller County post offices were often located in a residence or general store near the local church, gristmill, cotton gin, or blacksmith shop. They provided a center of community activity where families could socialize and purchase supplies as well as pick up mail. They were sometimes used as polling places during elections. The area covered by each post office was small since travel by wagon and horseback over dirt roads was difficult and slow. Although most facilities served farm villages, others were situated at railroad stops of sawmill towns. A storekeeper, miller, or other community leader filled the position of postmaster. The need for numerous small post stations decreased with the advent of motor transportation and improved roads. Larger towns absorbed some of the facilities; Rural free delivery, instituted in 1896, replaced others. In some cases, the rural community disappeared along with its post office -- victim of urbanization. The map on the reverse of this marker shows discontinued post offices that served the area of present-day Waller County from the 1840s to 1969.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Star of the Republic Museum — 16 mi
  A star-shaped museum of the Republic of Texas years, 1836 to 1846, built at Washington-on-the-Brazos after a Brenham campaign and opened on March 1, 1970.
• Washington-on-the-Brazos State Historic Site — 16 mi
  The townsite on the Brazos where delegates met in a cold, unfinished hall in March 1836 to declare Texas independent, with Independence Hall rebuilt and Anson Jones's Barrington farm worked as in 1850.
• Navasota — 20 mi
  A railroad and cotton town where the La Bahia Road crossed the Navasota River, scarred by an 1865 explosion and yellow fever, and the home ground of the songster Mance Lipscomb.
• San Felipe de Austin State Historic Site — 20 mi
  Stephen F. Austin's colonial capital on a Brazos bluff, the town of the Consultation and the first Texas newspapers, burned by its own garrison in the Runaway Scrape of 1836.

More markers nearby

• Hempstead, C.S.A. — steps away
• Waller County — steps away
• Hempstead High School — 0.5 mi
• Madison "Matt" "Kilpatrick" — 1.2 mi