John C. Collier Home

The house is the surviving piece of a college that is otherwise gone. The Handbook of Texas says Mansfield Male and Female College opened in 1870 in two small buildings, one a two-story frame building brought from Fort Belknap, taken apart and rebuilt on the site. The legislature chartered it in 1871 with power to grant degrees. Two alumni, John H. Stephens and Oscar W. Gillespie, later served in Congress. Competition from state and church schools ended the college in 1887, and its main building burned in 1889. The grounds then passed to the public free school.

What the plaque says

John C. Collier Home This structure was built in 1877 as a residence for the founder of Mansfield Male and Female College, John C. Collier (1834-1928). A native of South Carolina, Collier was distinguished educator and Presbyterian minister who in 1869 was asked to establish a school in Mansfield. The college operated from 1870 until 1887 and produced outstanding graduates and community leaders. Located west of the college, the home served also as a residence for female teachers and students. From 1890 to 1909, the A.J. Dukes family owned the Collier house. They made some major alterations to the home, including the addition of Mansfield's first indoor bathroom. Occupants of the home from 1909 until 1944 were Dr. William B. and Sallie (Hodges) McKnight, both of whom had graduated from Mansfield Male and Female College. Dr. McKnight established a medical practice in Mansfield in 1895 and also served as physician for the Southern Pacific Railroad. The house was adapted as Mansfield first funeral home by T.E. "Ernie" Blessing in 1944. Significant for its association with an early Texas educational institution and with several families of community leaders, the John C. Collier Home has remained a landmark in Mansfield. (1985)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Cedar Ridge Preserve — 11 mi
  A 633-acre Audubon Dallas preserve at the western edge of Dallas County, with about nine miles of trails through prairie, woodland and escarpment hills.
• Tarrant County Courthouse — 17 mi
  A pink-granite courthouse of 1895 on the bluff where the Army set up Fort Worth in 1849, in a county named for the man who led the 1841 attack on the Native villages of Village Creek.
• National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame — 18 mi
  A hall of fame begun in Hereford in 1975 to honor rodeo women, widened in 1977 to Western heritage, and housed in Fort Worth's Cultural District since 2002.
• Kimbell Art Museum — 18 mi
  Louis Kahn's cycloid-vaulted museum of 1972, built from Kay Kimbell's bequest and joined in 2013 by Renzo Piano's pavilion for the exhibitions the Kahn galleries could not hold.

More markers nearby

• Cumberland Presbyterian Cemetery — 0.8 mi
• First Baptist Church of Kennedale — 7.5 mi
• Tate Cemetery — 8.4 mi
• Everman Cemetery — 8.8 mi