Lee County

The 1936 stone gives the county's creation in a sentence; the making took more than a year. A January 1873 citizens' meeting asked for a new county named for Robert E. Lee, and the legislature passed the bill by April 1874. A disputed strip of western Burleson County needed a second law, Senator Seth Shepard's, which took effect May 2, 1874. Older Lexington, with better farmland, lost the county seat to Giddings, a railroad town barely three years old. The two-story mansard-roofed courthouse of 1878 burned in 1897, and James Riely Gordon's Romanesque Revival courthouse followed in 1899.

What the plaque says

Lee County Located on Old San Antonio Road, on land surveyed in 1821 as part of the original colony of Moses and Stephen F. Austin. In 1854 became site of major settlement by Wend from northern Europe, led by Pastor Johann Kilian. Had only school in U. S. that taught in Wendish-- language surviving only here and in Australia, in the modern world. County was created from Bastrop, Burleson, Fayette and Washington. Organized in 1874, it was named for Robert E. Lee (1807-1870), general of the Army of Northern Virginia, in the southern Confederacy, 1862-1865. Giddings is the county seat.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Texas Wendish Heritage Museum — 5.4 mi
  A museum at Serbin of the Wends, a Slavic people from Lusatia whose congregation of nearly 600 crossed on the Ben Nevis in 1854, losing seventy-three to cholera on the way.
• Lake Somerville State Park and Trailway — 15 mi
  Two park units on an 11,000-acre lake between Austin and College Station, joined by a thirteen-mile trailway for hikers, cyclists and riders with primitive camps along the way.
• Round Top and Festival Hill — 17 mi
  A German village on the old La Bahía Road, named for a house tower, with an 1867 stone church, a Fourth of July kept since 1851 and a concert hall a pianist built without blueprints.
• Monument Hill and Kreische Brewery State Historic Sites — 21 mi
  A shared tomb on the Colorado River bluff for the men of the Dawson fight and the black bean lottery, beside the ruins of a German stonemason's spring-fed brewery.

More markers nearby

• Milton Garrett York, Sr. — steps away
• City of Giddings — steps away
• County Named for Beloved Confederate General Robert E. Lee — steps away
• First National Bank — steps away