Higginbotham Brothers and Company

The chain began with a family's wagon trip. John James Higginbotham reached Dublin in December 1880 from Water Valley, Mississippi, with his wife and four of their twelve children, and the family's general store there opened the next year. One son opened the De Leon store, and in 1891 brothers Rufus, Joseph and Benjamin started one in Stephenville. The stores served customers from the cradle to the grave: at Stephenville the funeral parlor out back became Stephenville Funeral Home in 1945.

What the plaque says

Higginbotham Brothers and Company HIGGINBOTHAM BROTHERS AND COMPANY This location of the Higginbotham brothers and Co. was opened on Nov. 20, 1914 by brothers Rufus Wilson, Joseph Martin, and Bolivar Taylor, Jr. Original glass counters, cabinets, mirrors, stairways, floors and tin ceiling are still in use today. The first in the chain of general stores was opened in 1881 in de Leon by Joseph, Bolivar and brother-in-law Jeff Bartlett. Soon, combinations of brothers, relatives and friends opened other locations serving all aspects of customer needs, including undertaking. The funeral parlor was located on the north side of the cross plains store before being relocated. Today there are 34 Texas store locations which have served for 130 years. (2014)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Lake Brownwood State Park — 20 mi
  A CCC park on a reservoir that filled in a single flood before its dam was done, with stone cabins, a hilltop dance pavilion and a grand staircase climbed by dancers arriving by boat.
• Conrad Hilton Center and Mobley Hotel — 21 mi
  The 40-room oil-boom hotel in Cisco that Conrad Hilton bought in 1919 when a bank deal fell through, now a museum of the Hilton start and of Cisco's 1927 Santa Claus bank robbery.
• Old Rip at the Eastland County Courthouse — 28 mi
  A horned lizard in a glass-topped casket in the 1928 Eastland courthouse, the creature said to have come out alive from the old building's cornerstone after thirty-one years.

More markers nearby

• Cross Plains Review — steps away
• Home of Robert E. Howard — 0.5 mi
• Fort Mason-Camp Cooper Military Road — 0.7 mi
• Site of Cottonwood Springs — 6.0 mi