Jacob De Cordova

The plaque gives De Cordova the credit for Waco; the Handbook of Texas supplies the deal. Galveston's John Sydnor struck a bargain with him to divide the tract and sell it at a dollar an acre. Surveyor George Erath, who knew the site from his 1837 ranger days, urged placing the town at the old Waco village and suggested the name Waco Village for its earlier residents. When McLennan County formed in 1850, De Cordova and his partners donated free lots for public uses, and the village became the seat. A Jewish history source says he never lived there.

What the plaque says

Jacob De Cordova Born to a Jewish family in Spanishtown, Jamaica, British West Indies, Jacob De Cordova immigrated to Philadelphia about 1830. After a brief return to Jamaica where he founded a newspaper, he became engaged in trade between New Orleans and Texas. He and his brother Phineas (1819-1903) opened a shop in Galveston in 1837, then Jacob moved to Houston to establish a highly successful land agency. When Galveston's John S. Sydnor (1812-1869) acquired a large tract of land here on the Brazos River's West Bank in 1847, De Cordova was retained to survey and sell the property. He in turn hired George Bernard Erath (1813-1891) to conduct the survey. By 1848 De Cordova obtained control of the tract and journeyed here with Erath to lay out the town of Waco. About 1849 De Cordova also was retained to sell a vast tract near here on the East Bank of the Brazos. De Cordova donated several lots to the new town, including this Waco Spring site, the common square, and sites for numerous schools and churches. He died while formulating a scheme to industrialize the Brazos River Valley and was buried at Kimball in Bosque County (about 45 mI. nw). In 1935 De Cordova's remains were moved to the state cemetery in Austin. (1986)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Waco Suspension Bridge — steps away
  A Brazos crossing opened in January 1870 as the longest single-span suspension bridge west of the Mississippi, tolled until 1889, closed to vehicles in 1971 and now walked.
• Dr Pepper Museum — 0.4 mi
  The 1906 bottling plant of the Artesian Manufacturing and Bottling Company, built where Dr Pepper outgrew a Waco drugstore soda fountain, now the Dr Pepper Museum.
• Texas Ranger Hall of Fame and Museum — 0.7 mi
  The official state repository of Texas Ranger memorabilia, opened in 1968 in Fort Fisher Park on the Brazos, named for a Ranger post of 1837 whose site no one has located.
• Armstrong Browning Library — 1.3 mi
  A three-story Italian Renaissance library on the Baylor campus built to hold A. J. Armstrong's Browning collection, dedicated in December 1951 and now, by its own account, the world's largest of Browning material.

More markers nearby

• "The Waco Horror": The Lynching of Jesse Washington — steps away
• Waco — steps away
• McLennan County Medical Society — steps away
• Gerald-Harris Shooting — 0.3 mi