L. A. Washington, Jr. and wife Martha A.

The plaque says Lawrence Washington came to Texas in 1849 carrying George Washington's inaugural suit and letters. A county genealogy page tells a longer story: he left near Wheeling with his wife, children and more than 100 enslaved people, traveling by river and overland to Colorado County. The Civil War ended slavery and drained the family's wealth; they set out for California, stopped in Kansas and had reached Denison by 1878. In 1876 he sent a box of Washington relics, including twelve letters from George to his brother Samuel, to the Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition.

What the plaque says

L. A. Washington, Jr. and wife Martha A. Grandnephew of George Washington, who had been guardian of L. A.'s father; was a doctor; came to Texas 1849 with inaugural suit, personal letters of George Washington. Wife came from noted West Virginia family. Recorded, 1968

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Eisenhower Birthplace State Historic Site — 0.9 mi
  The small frame house beside the Katy tracks in Denison where Dwight Eisenhower was born in 1890, bought by townspeople in 1946 and given to Texas in 1958.
• Eisenhower State Park — 5.3 mi
  A bluff-top park on Lake Texoma opened in 1958 on land leased from the Corps of Engineers, in the Red River country of Fort Johnson, Colbert's Ferry and the Butterfield stages.
• Hagerman National Wildlife Refuge — 13 mi
  A 1946 refuge on the Big Mineral Arm of Lake Texoma, laid over land bought for Denison Dam and the site of the vanished railroad town of Hagerman, now a winter stop for geese.
• Choctaw Cultural Center — 15 mi
  The Choctaw Nation's history told from the Chahta side at Calera, with galleries from Nanih Waiya to the Trail of Tears and the reservation today, a living village and daily stickball.

More markers nearby

• Joseph G. McCoy, Promoter of Chisholm Trail — steps away
• North-South Railway Connection — 0.5 mi
• Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railroad — 0.5 mi
• Waples-Platter Grocery Company — 0.5 mi