Girlhood Home of Southern Beauty Lucy Holcombe Pickens

Wyalucing is best understood through who built it and who later bought it. The Handbook of Texas says enslaved people built Beverly Holcombe's two-story brick house, and a street of slave cabins linked it to the cottage called Westover. In spring 1865 Gen. Joseph O. Shelby addressed his Iron Brigade from the veranda. Lucy Holcombe married Francis Pickens there on April 26, 1858. In 1880 former slaves of Harrison County purchased the home for Bishop College, which used it as a music hall in the 1940s. The house was demolished in the early 1960s.

What the plaque says

Girlhood Home of Southern Beauty Lucy Holcombe Pickens (1832-1899) Only 19th century Texas woman honored by a portrait on money-- the Confederate $100 bill. In 1850s Lucy introduced ice tea and silk hose to East Texas, in social affairs at Wyalucing-- her family's home which stood at this site and was a center for social and cultural life in a wide area of plantations. Her husband was the Civil War Governor of South Carolina; her 2 brothers were Texas soldiers. Wyalucing (razed 1962) became 1863-65 headquarters for the Confederate Post Office Department in the area west of the Mississippi River. Supplemental Plate, 1989: This historical marker was relocated in 1990 from the site of Wyalucing (0.4 mi. West on Burleson Street) to the First Presbyterian Church. The Holcombe family was closely associated with the church, which was organized at Wyalucing on May 30, 1850. Lucy Pickens' father, B. L. Holcombe, was the congregation's first ruling elder. Lucy Holcombe was received into the membership of the church in 1853. (1965) Supplemental plate: This historical marker was relocated in 1990 from the site of Wyalucing (0.4 mi. West on Burleson Street) to the First Presbyterian Church. The Holcombe family was closely associated with the church, which was organized at Wyalucing on May 30, 1850. Lucy Pickens' father, B. L. Holcombe, was the congregation's first ruling elder. Lucy Holcombe was received into the membership of the church in 1853.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Harrison County Historical Museum — 0.3 mi
  Galleries in Marshall's 1901 courthouse that run from the Caddo to the present, with Wiley College, Lady Bird Johnson's inaugural gown and a military gallery across the square in Memorial City Hall.
• Texas and Pacific Railway Depot and Museum — 0.3 mi
  The only surviving building of the Texas and Pacific shops at Marshall, a 1912 Mission Revival depot saved from demolition in the 1990s, still an Amtrak stop, with a railway museum and a Mikado locomotive.
• Starr Family Home State Historic Site — 0.4 mi
  Maplecroft, the 1871 Greek Revival house Frank Starr built in Marshall, with Ruth Starr Blake's glass and china, an 1880s kitchen restored in 2019 and a retirement home built for a formerly enslaved person.
• Caddo Lake National Wildlife Refuge — 14 mi
  Wetlands and woods on part of a former ammunition plant, now a refuge for wood ducks, prothonotary warblers and alligator snapping turtles, with four easy trails and a free visitor center on a Ramsar lake.

More markers nearby

• Site of Temple Moses Montefiore — steps away
• Site of Marshall Masonic Female Institute — steps away
• Sam Houston's 1857 Campaign in Marshall — steps away
• The Library Movement in Marshall — steps away