Gen. Alexander Watkins Terrell

Terrell's Quaker parents took him from Virginia to Booneville, Missouri, in 1831; he graduated from the University of Missouri and practiced law at St. Joseph before coming to Austin. Disgusted with Reconstruction, he spent four years on his Robertson County plantation experimenting with scientific farming. In the Senate he introduced the enabling bills for the Railroad Commission and for trading three million Panhandle acres to the Capitol Syndicate. As a university regent from 1909 he led the drive for a new library and helped design it. He was president of the Texas State Historical Association in 1912.

What the plaque says

Gen. Alexander Watkins Terrell General Alexander Watkins Terrell, born in Patrick County, Va., November 23, 1827. Came to Texas in 1852. Died while visiting in Mineral Wells, September 9, 1912. District Judge, Second Judicial District, 1857-1863, Lieutenant Colonel, Thirty-Fourth Texas Regiment, C.S.A. Until 1865 when he was promoted to Brigadier General. Senator, Texas Legislature, 1876-1907, U.S. Minister to Turkey, 1893-1896.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Texas State Cemetery — steps away
  A hill east of the Capitol that began with one general's grave in 1851 and now holds Stephen F. Austin, governors, Barbara Jordan and more than 2,000 Confederate veterans and widows.
• French Legation State Historic Site — 0.3 mi
  A raised pine house built in 1840 and 1841 for France's envoy to the Republic of Texas, who left Austin in a rage over a neighbor's pigs before it was finished.
• George Washington Carver Museum — 0.4 mi
  East Austin's museum of Black history and culture, grown from a segregated branch library moved across town in 1933, with a permanent exhibit on Juneteenth at its core.
• Texas State Capitol — 1.0 mi
  Austin's fourth statehouse, a Renaissance Revival capitol of 1888 that stands 311 feet to its Goddess of Liberty and was restored after the 1983 fire.

More markers nearby

• John Ireland — steps away
• William P. Hardeman — steps away
• Capt. Jesse Billingsley — steps away
• General Moseley Baker — steps away