John Peter Smith

Smith reached Fort Worth at twenty-two, an orphan with a Bethany College degree. The Handbook of Texas says his parents died in 1844. In January 1854 he took over the army hospital the Second Dragoons had abandoned and ran the town's first school there, though ill health kept him teaching only three months. He then turned surveyor and read law, joining the bar in 1860. Reportedly he died of blood poisoning after a robbery and assault outside his St. Louis hotel in 1901, and citizens later raised a marble bust to him.

What the plaque says

John Peter Smith A native of Kentucky, John Peter Smith migrated to Fort Worth in 1853. He worked as a teacher, clerk, and surveyor before his appointment as Deputy Surveyor of the Denton Land Department in 1855, for which he received payment in property. Also a student of law, he was later admitted to the bar. Although opposed to the secession of Texas during the Civil War, Smith raised a company of Tarrant County men for the Confederacy and joined Sibley's Brigade in 1861. While in the war he served in the unsuccessful invasion of New Mexico, the recapture of Galveston in 1863, and was severely wounded at Donaldsville, Louisiana, later that year. After the war Smith returned to Fort Worth, where he became involved in the development of the City. He helped organize a bank, gas light company, and street railway. He also donated land for parks, cemeteries,and a hospital, later named John Peter Smith Hospital. In 1882 he became Mayor and directed the establishment of many public services, including the school system and the water department. In 1901 Smith died in St. Louis, Missouri, while on a promotional trip for Fort Worth. He is buried in Oakwood Cemetery, a site he donated to the city. (1980)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Tarrant County Courthouse — 0.6 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.
• Kimbell Art Museum — 2.0 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.
• National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame — 2.3 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.
• Fort Worth Stockyards — 2.9 mi
  The brick-street cattle market where Armour and Swift built packing plants in 1902, now a National Register district with a Coliseum, a museum and a longhorn drive twice a day.

More markers nearby

• Site of Saint Stanislaus Kostka Catholic Church — steps away
• Fort Worth Library — steps away
• Ephraim Merrill Daggett — steps away
• Shelton Building — steps away