Katie Daffan

Katie Daffan's textbooks put a version of the war in front of Texas children. The Handbook of Texas lists her Texas Heros of 1924, adopted as a text for grades three to five, along with Texas Hero Stories of 1912. She served five terms as president of the Texas Division of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, and her last writing still defended states' rights and what she called the Brave Cause of the South. That cause rested on slavery. Raised Baptist, she converted to Catholicism in 1938.

What the plaque says

Katie Daffan Born in Brenham, Katie Litty Daffan was a well-known author, educator, journalist, and club-woman. She began her career as a teacher and was an officer of the Texas State Historical Assoc. She wrote several books, including a Texas history textbook. Active in the United Daughters of The Confederacy, she served from 1911 to 1918 as superintendent of the Confederate Woman's Home in Austin. She was literary editor of the "Houston Chronicle" from 1921 to 1928. Miss Daffan taught school in Ennis and was feature columnist for the "Ennis Daily News", 1936-50. She died here in 1951. (1986)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Ellis County Courthouse — 13 mi
  J. Riely Gordon's courthouse of 1897 in Pecos red sandstone and pink granite, with twenty-one carved stone faces and two cornerstones left by a quarrel over its building.
• Petroleum Industry Park — 19 mi
  The pipes and drilling tower mark where a city water well struck oil on June 9, 1894, the start of the first Texas field to produce oil and gas in important quantities.
• Cedar Ridge Preserve — 29 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.

More markers nearby

• Railroads in Ennis — steps away
• The Southern Pacific Railroad in Ennis — steps away
• Town of Ennis — steps away
• Jay Justin Clarke — steps away