Frederick Harrison Rankin

Frederick Rankin's route to Ellis County ran through early Anglo settlement. The Handbook of Texas says he came to Texas in 1822, received title to a sitio and a labor in what became Harris County in 1824 as one of Austin's Old Three Hundred, and appears in the 1826 census as a farmer and stock raiser with three servants in his household, a term the Handbook leaves unexplained. He later lived in Polk and Navarro counties and by 1874 on Chambers Creek in Ellis County, where he died.

What the plaque says

Frederick Harrison Rankin Born in Kentucky, February 15, 1795. Came to Texas in 1822 with Austin's first colony, died July 2, 1874. His wife Elizabeth Smith Rankin, born January 30, 1802, died June 1, 1882

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Ellis County Courthouse — 13 mi
  J. Riely Gordon's courthouse of 1897 in Pecos red sandstone and pink granite, with twenty-one carved stone faces and two cornerstones left by a quarrel over its building.
• Petroleum Industry Park — 19 mi
  The pipes and drilling tower mark where a city water well struck oil on June 9, 1894, the start of the first Texas field to produce oil and gas in important quantities.
• Cedar Ridge Preserve — 28 mi
  A 633-acre Audubon Dallas preserve at the western edge of Dallas County, with about nine miles of trails through prairie, woodland and escarpment hills.

More markers nearby

• Wayman Chapel African Methodist Episcopal Church — 0.3 mi
• Jack Lummus — 0.6 mi
• Burnam Square and Cemetery — 0.8 mi
• Jay Justin Clarke — 0.9 mi