Governor J. D. Sayers

After his governorship, Sayers practiced law in San Antonio and then returned to Austin. He chaired the state Industrial Accident Board from 1913 to 1915 and, as a University of Texas regent in 1916, backed the university in its fight with Governor James E. Ferguson. He sat on the board of legal examiners from 1922 to 1926 and on the board of pardon advisors until his death. He died in Austin on May 15, 1929; a procession brought his body here, and Masonic lodges from Austin and Bastrop buried him.

What the plaque says

Governor J. D. Sayers (September 23, 1841 - May 15, 1929) Joseph Draper Sayers moved to Bastrop with his father, Dr. David Sayers in 1851. His battlefield valor won him post of adjutant general of the Confederate Army in the Civil War. He married Ada Walton, and after Ada died, Orline (Lena) Walton. He was a Mason, a Methodist layman, a civic leader, and a lawyer. In 1873 he served as state senator from Bastrop. He was lieutenant governor, 1879-81; United States congressman, 1885-99; and governor of Texas, 1899-1903. Recorded - 1978

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Bastrop State Park — 1.1 mi
  The westernmost loblolly pines in the United States, cut off from the East Texas forest by a hundred miles of post oak, burned almost entirely in 2011 and growing back.
• Texas Wendish Heritage Museum — 19 mi
  A museum at Serbin of the Wends, a Slavic people from Lusatia whose congregation of nearly 600 crossed on the Ben Nevis in 1854, losing seventy-three to cholera on the way.
• McKinney Falls State Park — 25 mi
  Limestone falls on Onion Creek inside Austin, where people camped under a rock overhang for thousands of years and a financier of the Texas Revolution built his stone ranch house.
• Lockhart Courthouse Square — 27 mi
  A cotton-era courthouse town named the Barbecue Capital of Texas, built near the 1840 Plum Creek fight that followed the killing of Comanche leaders at peace talks.

More markers nearby

• Robert Love Reding — steps away
• John Holland Jenkins — steps away
• William Dunbar — steps away
• Bastrop County — 0.7 mi