George and Myra Wilson

The Heritage Park grounds sit on the Wilsons' old brickyard. The museum says George H. Wilson, who lived from 1854 to 1929, started making brick in 1891 from clay dug on this eleven-acre site, then built the house in 1910 in front of the plant for Myra, with solid brick walls fourteen inches thick. Myra Wilson, 1860 to 1941, led the Ladies Cemetery Society from 1890. A local account says a 1923 loan of 10,000 dollars from banker Phil Foscue financed the cemetery chapel named for her.

What the plaque says

George and Myra Wilson Only about a year after they met in 1880, George and Myra (Tuggle) Wilson married and began changing their small town into a bustling city. George and his brother opened a brick plant and were hired to build many prominent buildings such as the City National Bank building, First Baptist Church, Cumby High School, Sulphur Springs City Hall and the Freestone, Llano and Titus County Courthouses. Myra was a charter member of the Joseph Wheeler Chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, was President of the Ladies' Cemetery Society for 43 years and raised funding for a cemetery chapel. Both were involved with the public library. The efforts of the Wilsons and others like them paved the way for cultural change in the once-frontier State of Texas. (2014)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Cooper Lake State Park — 15 mi
  Two units on Jim Chapman Lake, a Corps reservoir proposed in the late 1930s, stalled by a lawsuit until 1984 and dedicated in 1991, with a 10.5-mile equestrian trail and wildlife land around it.

More markers nearby

• Atkins House — steps away
• Hopkins County Echo-Daily News-Telegram — 0.3 mi
• Sulphur Springs Volunteer Fire Department and Fire Bell of 1889 — 0.3 mi
• First Presbyterian Church of Sulphur Springs — 0.3 mi