Historical Marker
Jane Yelvington McCallum
Austin, Travis County · Texas
Erected 1990
McCallum was born at La Vernia, where her father was a pioneer sheriff of Wilson County, and studied at the University of Texas from 1912 to 1915 without taking a degree. In 1915 she became president of the Austin Woman Suffrage Association; she ran press and publicity for the state suffrage amendment, chaired the state ratification committee for the Nineteenth Amendment and wrote a suffrage column for the Austin papers. As women's chairman of the fourth Liberty Loan drive she led Austin women in raising nearly $700,000. She later ran publicity for the 1920 Better Schools Amendment.
What the plaque says
Jane Yelvington McCallum (December 30, 1877 - August 15, 1957) One of the most prominent leaders of the Texas woman suffrage movement of the early 20th century, Jane Y. McCallum lived in this house with her husband, Arthur N., and five children. As a member of the Texas Joint Legislative Council (nicknamed The Petticoat Lobby), she worked for political and social reform through the Texas Legislature. Appointed Secretary of State by Gov. Dan Moody in 1927, she was reappointed by Gov. Ross Sterling in 1931. During her term of office she discovered and had preserved an original signed copy of the Texas Declaration of Independence. (1990)
Where it stands
30.29952, -97.74162 · Directions
Worth the stop nearby
- Harry Ransom Center — 1.0 miThe University of Texas archive where a Gutenberg Bible and the earliest surviving camera photograph are always on view, free, beside the papers of Watergate and the movies.
- LBJ Presidential Library — 1.2 miA ten-story travertine archive on the University of Texas campus holding 45 million pages from a presidency of civil rights laws, the War on Poverty and Vietnam.
- Bullock Texas State History Museum — 1.3 miThe state's history museum at the head of Congress Avenue, built around the hull of La Salle's ship La Belle, raised from Matagorda Bay with 1.8 million artifacts.
- Texas State Capitol — 1.7 miAustin's fourth statehouse, a Renaissance Revival capitol of 1888 that stands 311 feet to its Goddess of Liberty and was restored after the 1983 fire.