Log Cabin Pioneers of Dallas County

The families who built log cabins here held their land under a colony contract that did not stay settled. The Handbook of Texas says the Peters colony contract expired on July 1, 1848, after which new settlers could claim 640-acre grants with state certificates while the company still demanded up to half of the old settlers' land. The colonists answered with mass meetings and a convention held in Dallas on May 21, 1849. John H. Reagan and James W. Throckmorton led the protest, and a January 1850 law attempted a remedy.

What the plaque says

Log Cabin Pioneers of Dallas County Most colonists first settled in this "Three Forks" area of the Trinity River as members of the Peters Colony after 1841. Immigrants from such states as Arkansas, Illinois, Kentucky, Missouri, and Tennessee brought with them a tradition of building log shelters. Land title was granted to settlers who worked at least 15 acres and built "a good and comfortable cabin upon it." This region was abundant in oak, juniper (popularly called cedar), walnut, ash, bois d'arc, and elm trees, which furnished sturdy building timbers. John Neely Bryan, a colonist from Tennessee, arrived near this site in late 1841 and built a log cabin in 1842. The area's first school and church was built of logs at Farmer's Branch (12 mi. NW) in 1845. J. W. Smith and J. M. Patterson brought goods from Shreveport (184 mi. E) in 1846 for resale at their log store in Dallas. Milled lumber appeared in Dallas buildings by 1849, and bricks were available by 1860. That year a fire destroyed most of the town's original log cabins. The nearby cabin was built of cedar logs before 1850, possibly by Kentuckian Gideon Pemberton. It was moved from its original site (7.5 mi. E) in 1926 and rebuilt at several locations, including Bryan's designated courthouse site (1 blk. SW) in 1936, and this block in 1971. Texas Sesquicentennial 1836 - 1986

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza — steps away
  A plow-company warehouse of 1903, identified by the Warren Commission as the building Oswald fired from, now a museum on its sixth and seventh floors above Dealey Plaza.
• Dallas Museum of Art — 0.7 mi
  A city art museum that began as the Dallas Art Association in 1903, grew up in Fair Park, and has stood in the Arts District since 1984 under a forty-foot barrel vault.
• Dallas Heritage Village at Old City Park — 1.2 mi
  Dallas's first city park, laid out around Browder's Spring in 1876, now a museum of historic buildings moved here from across North Texas, among them Millermore, a cotton planter's mansion.
• African American Museum, Dallas — 2.5 mi
  Founded in 1974 at Bishop College, a free Fair Park museum holding the Sepia photograph archive, African art and A. Maceo Smith's papers, and the story of the Hall of Negro Life.

More markers nearby

• Dallas County — steps away
• First Juries to Sit Women in Dallas County — steps away
• Women's Suffrage in Dallas County — steps away
• 1910 Lynching of Allen Brooks — steps away