Founding of Georgetown

The Handbook of Texas gives George Washington Glasscock a life before Georgetown. Born in Kentucky in 1810, he was in 1832 a partner of Abraham Lincoln in flatboating on the Sangamon River, fought in the Black Hawk War and came to Texas in 1835. He joined the Grass Fight and the siege of Bexar. The Handbook says he donated 172 acres for the county seat, where a Georgetown history site says 173, with his partner Thomas B. Huling. He returned to Travis County in 1853 and died in Austin in 1868.

What the plaque says

Founding of Georgetown According to local tradition Williamson County's first six commissioners met here under a stately oak tree in May 1848 to decide where the county seat should be located. Prominent local landowner George Washington Glasscock, Sr., later joined them and offered to donate an area of land bounded by the tree at one corner and the San Gabriel River to the north and west as a site for the county seat. The commissioners accepted his offer and in July 1848 named the town Georgetown in Glasscock's honor. The landmark oak tree was felled by a storm in 1886. (1994)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Williamson County Courthouse — steps away
  The fifth Williamson County courthouse, a Beaux Arts building by C. H. Page, rises over a Georgetown square of more than 50 Victorian-era buildings.
• Inner Space Cavern — 2.1 mi
  A Georgetown cave found in 1963 when highway engineers drilled test holes, holding Pleistocene fossils and 72-degree rooms that visitors reach by an artificial tunnel.
• The Round Rock — 8.5 mi
  A table-shaped stone in Brushy Creek gave Round Rock its name in 1854; the Chisholm Trail crossed the creek near it, and Old Town stayed behind when the railroad pulled the town east.
• Mount Bonnell — 23 mi
  Austin's old lookout over the Colorado, named by an 1838 traveler, picnicked on by George and Libbie Custer, and reached by a 1939 flight of about 100 limestone steps.

More markers nearby

• Jessie Daniel Ames — steps away
• Ku Klux Klan Trials — steps away
• Williamson County Sun — steps away
• C.A.D. Clamp — steps away