Gideon Lincecum

Gideon Lincecum wrote down Choctaw history before most Texans thought to ask. The Handbook of Texas says he spent his boyhood among the Muskogee (Creek) and later lived among the Choctaws (Chahta) in Mississippi, recording their legends and traditions in Choctaw; he translated them in Texas as the Chahta Tradition. He brought ten enslaved people to Long Point in 1848. At seventy-six he took a widowed daughter and her seven children to a Confederate colony at Tuxpan, Mexico, grew bananas for five years and came home in 1873. He called himself a freethinker and urged legalizing castration of criminals.

What the plaque says

Gideon Lincecum (1793 - 1874) As a boy Gideon Lincecum moved with his father to various frontier sites in his native Georgia and in Mississippi. It was during this time that he developed insights about natural habitats and cultivated an understanding of Indian culture which later characterized his various scientific and social achievements. He participated in the War of 1812, and in 1814 married Sarah Bryan. After settling near here in 1848 the self-taught Lincecum opened a medical practice. He gained a reputation for rejecting commonly-used contemporary medicines and dispensing herbal remedies instead. As a naturalist Lincecum recorded detailed observations of a variety of flora and fauna in Texas and achieved international recognition for a long-term study of an agricultural ant common to the state. He conducted scientific research in numerous fields and for many years maintained records of the weather in Washington County for the Smithsonian Institution. Except for a 5-year stay in Mexico during Reconstruction Lincecum lived and worked in Washington County where he completed his autobiography. Initially buried in nearby Mt. Zion Cemetery, his remains were later removed and reinterred in the Stephen F. Austin lot in the State Cemetery in Austin in 1936. (1993)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Lake Somerville State Park and Trailway — 12 mi
  Two park units on an 11,000-acre lake between Austin and College Station, joined by a thirteen-mile trailway for hikers, cyclists and riders with primitive camps along the way.
• Independence and Old Baylor Park — 12 mi
  A crossroads north of Brenham that was the richest town in Texas when it won Baylor University in 1845, refused the railroad, and lost the college to Waco and Belton in 1886.
• Round Top and Festival Hill — 15 mi
  A German village on the old La Bahía Road, named for a house tower, with an 1867 stone church, a Fourth of July kept since 1851 and a concert hall a pianist built without blueprints.
• Washington-on-the-Brazos State Historic Site — 23 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.

More markers nearby

• Leander H. McNelly — 3.1 mi
• Glenblythe Plantation, Home of Thomas Affleck — 3.2 mi
• Mount Vernon — 4.0 mi
• Birthplace of Hedwig T. Kniker — 4.1 mi