John Tarleton

Tarleton's Texas years were rougher than the plaque suggests. The Handbook says he bought some 10,000 acres of West Texas land at 12.5 cents an acre, married a Waco widow in 1876 and divorced within a year, then in 1880 walked to his pastureland with an umbrella and a suitcase, his money hidden in his clothes. At Santo he fenced his acres but met falling cattle prices and fence-cutting by angry neighbors, and shrank his holdings to 1,400 acres. He died of typhoid in 1895 and was buried at Patilo. His remains were moved to Stephenville in 1926.

What the plaque says

John Tarleton John Tarleton was an orphan, who at an early age worked his way from New England to Knoxville, Tennessee. Employed in a dry goods store for over forty years, he invested in government land certificates, eventually securing patents to thousands of acres. Arriving in Texas in the 1870s, he lived briefly in Waco, where he operated a mercantile store. He moved to this area in 1880, and entered the cattle business. At his death in November 1895, he left the bulk of his estate to found Tarleton College, which opened in Stephenville in 1899. Texas Sesquicentennial 1836 - 1986

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Dublin Bottling Works — 12 mi
  The Erath County plant that bottled Dr Pepper with cane sugar from 1891 until a 2012 settlement ended its Dr Pepper license, and that still makes its own sodas the same way.
• Dinosaur Valley State Park — 24 mi
  Theropod and sauropod trackways of about 113 million years ago in the bed of the Paluxy River, a National Natural Landmark where R. T. Bird found the first distinct sauropod tracks in 1937.
• Granbury Courthouse Square — 30 mi
  A National Register square of limestone storefronts around W. C. Dodson's Second Empire courthouse, whose clock tower citizens saved after a 1968 tornado.

More markers nearby

• Historic Brick Streets of Stephenville — 0.5 mi
• Stephenville Masonic Lodge #267 — 0.9 mi
• Cornelia Graves — 1.6 mi
• Kiker's Gin — 6.8 mi