Judge George E. Quinan

The plaque follows Quinan's law career. The Handbook of Texas adds the plantation: land on Peach Creek, three miles north of Wharton, where in 1860 he held twenty-four enslaved people. When the war came, the senator and lawyer joined the Wharton Rifles as a private and also served the Confederacy as district tax collector. On March 2, 1885, he was asked to give the dedication speech at the laying of the new Capitol's cornerstone, and the Austin Daily Statesman printed it the next day. He was buried on his Peach Creek property beside his wife and stepson.

What the plaque says

Judge George E. Quinan A native of Dublin, Ireland, George E. Quinan came to Texas in the 1830s. By the mid-1840s he had moved to Wharton and set up a law office near this site. He was elected district attorney in 1845. Quinan and his wife Mary Anne established a home on Peach Creek in Wharton County. He served two terms in the Texas Senate from 1857 to 1861. After service in the Confederate army during the Civil War, he was a member of the Commission of Civil Appeals. Judge Quinan was among the founders of the State Bar Association in 1879. He is buried near Peach Creek. (1988)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Attwater Prairie Chicken National Wildlife Refuge — 26 mi
  Ten thousand acres of native coastal prairie northeast of Eagle Lake, kept for a critically endangered grouse, many of whose birds are hatched in captivity and released here.
• Levi Jordan Plantation State Historic Site — 35 mi
  A sugar and cotton plantation on the San Bernard River whose enslaved builders and their descendants left one of the best-preserved African American archeological sites in Texas.

More markers nearby

• Wharton County — steps away
• City of Wharton — steps away
• First Baptist Church of Wharton — 0.3 mi
• St. Paul Lutheran Church — 0.5 mi