Hill County

Hill County began as a land play. The Handbook of Texas says army surgeon Josephus Murray Steiner and Elijah Sterling Clack Robertson, son of the empresario, devised a plan to split Navarro County and stimulate land speculation, and a petition circulated on September 19, 1852. Governor Bell called a special session on frontier problems, and the division bill passed. Steiner soon became better known for another act. In September 1853 he killed Major Ripley Arnold at Fort Graham, and a civil court acquitted him in 1854. A valley in the county still carries his name.

What the plaque says

Hill County Created February 7, 1853. Organized May 14, 1853. Named in honor of Dr. George W. Hill, 1814-1860. Member of the Texas Congress and Legislature. Secretary of War of the Republic of Texas, 1843-1845. Lexington, first village 1853. Hillsboro, county seat since.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Hill County Courthouse — steps away
  Wesley C. Dodson's limestone Second Empire courthouse of 1890 on the Hillsboro square, gutted by fire on New Year's Day 1993 and rededicated in 1999 after a rebuilding that two Willie Nelson concerts helped pay for.
• Cleburne State Park — 30 mi
  A 1930s Civilian Conservation Corps park on the old Chisholm Trail crossing country, with a spring-fed lake, a hand-carved three-tiered spillway and a CCC bridge in Johnson County.
• Bosque Museum — 31 mi
  A Clifton museum holding what it calls the largest repository of Norwegian artifacts in the South and Southwest, with Bosque County finds some 10,000 years old and a log cabin built by the Olson family.

More markers nearby

• Site of Old Lexington Village — steps away
• Bragg Williams Lynching — steps away
• City of Hillsboro — steps away
• James L. Harris — steps away