Leesville School

Leesville began on the east bank of O'Neill Creek under another name, Capote, after the nearby hills. In the late 1860s Sylvester A. Hubbard built an ox-powered treadmill to grind corn and saw lumber, and Newburn H. Guinn sold lots on the west bank and named the place Leesburg for his daughter, Lee, about 1870. Because Texas already had a Leesburg, the 1873 post office was called Capote, and the name became Leesville in 1874. On June 30, 1936, more than twenty-six inches of rain fell, and some businesses and homes were rebuilt half a mile west.

What the plaque says

Leesville School Settled prior to the Civil War, the community of Leesburg, later known as Leesville, was a thriving trade and supply center for the region when this one-room brick schoolhouse was constructed in 1868. The building site was conveyed to stockholders of the Leesburg Male and Female Institute in 1873 by Mrs. M. C. Hubbard. The original materials used in the construction of the schoolhouse were provided locally. Red clay bricks for the exterior were manufactured in a kiln east of the site, the lumber came from the Daniel Brown Sawmill located on nearby O'Neill Creek, and local residents provided the labor. As the community grew, wooden additions to the building, since removed, were constructed. Classes were held here until 1918, when a new schoolhouse was built. In the 1920s the building was adapted for uses as a community center and was the site of various civic functions, including oyster fries, barbecues, and religious meetings. Later it was used as a school lunchroom and a private residence. Rebuilt as a community center, the Leesville School serves as a reminder of the proud heritage of the area's early residents. (1982)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Sophienburg Museum and Archives — 31 mi
  The hilltop where Prince Carl of Solms-Braunfels raised the Adelsverein's headquarters in 1845, now the museum and archive of the German colony that became New Braunfels.
• Gruene Historic District — 32 mi
  A cotton town on the Guadalupe that the boll weevil emptied, rescued in the 1970s by a kayaking architecture student, with a dance hall that says it has never closed.

More markers nearby

• Gonzales-San Antonio Road — 2.0 mi
• Dewville United Methodist Church — 4.8 mi
• Sandies-Dewville Community — 4.9 mi
• El Capote Ranch — 6.6 mi