Lexington Schools

Lexington's district grew by taking in the country schools around it. Tanglewood, five miles northwest, enrolled forty-two pupils in 1905-06, and Knobbs Springs, twelve miles west, enrolled sixty-nine; Knobbs Springs put up a new schoolhouse in 1919 that later served as a community center. Both were consolidated with the Lexington Independent School District in 1950. That year only 4.5 percent of Lee County residents over twenty-five had finished high school; by 1980 the share was 43.5 percent, and in 1989 the Lexington system counted about 800 students.

What the plaque says

Lexington Schools First local school session was held in 1849 in log home of Capt. James Shaw (1808-79), founder of Lexington, then in Burleson (since 1874 in Lee) County. Andrew Neill Lodge No. 138, A.F. & A.M., to which Shaw and other patrons belonged, joined with newly-formed School District No. 9 in 1854 to build a 2-story schoolhouse-lodge hall a mile south of town. In 1860 the school became Lexington Male and Female Academy, using same hall. A frame schoolhouse (1892) and one of brick (1910) antedated the present plant that was begun in 1936 with high school building. (1972)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Lake Somerville State Park and Trailway — 20 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.
• Texas Wendish Heritage Museum — 21 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.
• Bastrop State Park — 27 mi
  The westernmost loblolly pines in the United States, cut off from the East Texas forest by a hundred miles of post oak, burned almost entirely in 2011 and growing back.
• Round Top and Festival Hill — 30 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.

More markers nearby

• The First Baptist Church of Lexington — steps away
• United Methodist Church of Lexington — 0.2 mi
• Town of Lexington — 0.3 mi
• Lexington Masonic Lodge No. 138 — 0.3 mi