James Norman Smith

Smith's mark on the map is Concrete. He laid out the townsite in 1846, the county's earliest, on the Upper Cuero Creek settlement dating from 1827, and the town took its name from the adobe concrete used in local buildings and homes. He also surveyed Clinton for the friends to whom Richard Chisholm deeded 640 acres, and the new town was named for Green DeWitt's son. The first school at Concrete was his. Concrete College came later and drew 250 students in 1873-74, for a time the largest boarding school in the state.

What the plaque says

James Norman Smith "Uncle Jimmy the Peacemaker." Son of Sgt. James Turner Smith, veteran of American Revolution. Born and educated in North Carolina. Lived for 32 years in Tennessee, where he taught James K. Polk, later a U.S. President. Taught first school in area now De Witt County, 1840 (year he came to Texas). Surveyed De Witt County; was first county clerk. Organized Presbyterian churches at Victoria, Hochheim, Clinton, Peebles Ranch, Mill Creek, Live Oak, and Cuero. Organized first Masonic Lodge in county. At 1857 political rally, introduced old Tennessee friend, Sam Houston. (1971)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Chisholm Trail Heritage Museum — 0.2 mi
  A cattle-country museum in Cuero's 1903 Knights of Pythias Hall, telling the Guadalupe Valley's 1866 drive north and the Sutton-Taylor feud that bloodied DeWitt County.
• Spoetzl Brewery — 25 mi
  The brewery a Czech and German railroad town started in a tin shed in 1909, run through Prohibition by a Bavarian who had brewed in Cairo, and then by his daughter.
• De León Plaza — 26 mi
  The central plaza of Guadalupe Victoria, the only predominantly Mexican colony in Texas, founded by Martín De León in 1824 and taken from his family after 1836.
• Museum of the Coastal Bend — 27 mi
  Victoria College's museum of thirteen thousand years on the middle Texas coast, from Clovis hunters and Karankawa potters to La Salle's lost Fort St. Louis and the first ranches.

More markers nearby

• St. Michael's Catholic Church — steps away
• Honoring Texas Confederate General August C. Buchel — steps away
• World War II Air Training School Brayton Flying Field — steps away
• Cuero Land and Immigration Company — steps away