Major Archibald Johnson Rose

Rose's plaque closes with his farm-reform and school work. The Handbook adds a final career in state office. Governor Charles Culberson made him commissioner of agriculture, insurance, statistics and history in 1894, and he urged a revamping of the insurance laws and helped the Texas State Library acquire historic manuscripts. He had become grand master of the Texas Masons in 1886, one of two Salado Lodge members to hold that office by 1890. He joined the Texas State Historical Association in its first year. Eight of his eleven children reached adulthood.

What the plaque says

Major Archibald Johnson Rose (1830-1903) Before migrating to Texas, A. J. Rose made a fortune in the 1849 California Gold Rush. In 1857 he and his wife Sallie (Austin) brought their family from Missouri to Travis County, Texas. Later they settled in San Saba County, where Rose ran a mill and started a school. He served in the local militia, took part in frontier Indian battles, and was a Confederate Army Major. In 1870 Rose moved to Salado. At this site he built a two-story home where his 11 children grew up. A successful and progressive farmer, Rose sought ways to improve farming methods. When the first local Grange in Texas began in Salado in 1873, he joined the farmers' group. Later that year he helped organize the statewide Grange which became a strong legislative lobby for land and tax laws protecting farmers and for improved schools. As Worthy Master of the Grange, Rose led in beginning cooperatives, textile mills, and a fire insurance company. An advocate for better schools and teachers, Rose served on local school boards, as a trustee of Salado College, and present Mary Hardin-Baylor College in Belton. He was appointed to the Board of Directors at Texas A&M University in 1887 and served as president of the board. He was buried in Salado Cemetery. (1979)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Temple Railroad and Heritage Museum — 15 mi
  The Santa Fe depot of 1911 in a railroad town that began in 1880 as a construction camp, now a museum with locomotives and cars parked beside the active rail yard.
• Williamson County Courthouse — 23 mi
  The fifth Williamson County courthouse, a Beaux Arts building by C. H. Page, rises over a Georgetown square of more than 50 Victorian-era buildings.
• Inner Space Cavern — 25 mi
  A Georgetown cave found in 1963 when highway engineers drilled test holes, holding Pleistocene fossils and 72-degree rooms that visitors reach by an artificial tunnel.

More markers nearby

• James Lowry Smith — 0.3 mi
• Dr. Welborn and Louisa Adeline Barton — 0.3 mi
• Hermon and Margaret L. Aiken — 0.3 mi
• Capt. Milton Wesley Damron — 0.3 mi