Irvin Capers Lord

Lord married Emmeline Seddons in Charleston in 1848 and moved to Houston to escape the yellow fever then imperiling much of South Carolina; the fever's victims included children of the couple. A supporter of Sam Houston, he named his youngest son Sam Houston Lord in 1861. As mayor he rebuilt the city hall and Market House and paved several downtown streets, and his proudest boast as a peace officer was that he never carried a gun. City directories also list him as a blacksmith, sawmill owner and lumber dealer, and he acted in local Shakespeare productions.

What the plaque says

Irvin Capers Lord South Carolina native Irvin Capers Lord (1827-1914) came to Houston with his family in 1854. A machinist by trade, he was co-owner of Lord and Richardson's Eagle Iron Works. In 1858 he was elected alderman, representing the First Ward until 1863 when he was elected city marshall. Lord helped lead Houston through the trying times of the Civil War and Reconstruction. He was elected alderman from the Fifth Ward in 1874 and became Houston's 26th mayor in 1875. He later served as a Harris County commissioner, street commissioner, and sheriff. Texas Sesquicentennial 1836 - 1986

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Sam Houston Park and the Heritage Society — 0.9 mi
  Ten historic buildings gathered in a downtown park below the skyscrapers, among them the 1870 house of the Reverend Jack Yates, built five years after emancipation.
• Rothko Chapel — 2.0 mi
  An octagonal chapel open to all faiths, built by the de Menils around fourteen dark canvases by Mark Rothko, with Barnett Newman's Broken Obelisk standing in the pool outside.
• The Menil Collection — 2.1 mi
  John and Dominique de Menil's free museum in Montrose: a grey-sided Renzo Piano building among bungalows, holding antiquities, Surrealism and art of Oceania under natural light.
• Buffalo Soldiers National Museum — 2.1 mi
  A museum in Houston's 1925 Light Guard Armory that tells the service of Black soldiers from the Revolutionary War onward, built from one veteran's thirty years of collecting.

More markers nearby

• Edwin Fairfax Gray — steps away
• Caspar Braun — steps away
• Brown Chapel A. M. E. Church — 0.5 mi
• John Kirby Allen — 0.7 mi