Mary Jane Gentry

Thurber's company town drew its miners from elsewhere, and the Handbook of Texas, which cites Gentry's thesis, tells how. Isolation forced the operators to recruit in other states and overseas, with large numbers from Italy, Poland, Britain and Ireland and fewer from Mexico and several other countries. Black miners from Indiana worked in the mines during the labor troubles of the 1880s. In 1926, in a strike, the union chartered two railroad cars to send 162 Mexican workers, who had refused to cross the line, back home.

What the plaque says

Mary Jane Gentry Born in Boston in 1912, Mary Jane Catherine Gentry became an accomplished educator, historian, author and world traveler. Her 1946 University of Texas master's thesis, written under supervision of Walter Precott Webb, was entitled "Thurber: The Life and Death of a Texas Town." Today, it is a classic in Texas cultural and social history, and still guides much of the continuing research and interpretation of that historic town. She also co-authored The Story of Texas, adopted as a seventh-grade history textbook and used by children throughout the state. Gentry taught in public schools at Thurber, Springer Gap, San Angelo, Austin and Odessa, and at Odessa College before passing away in Dallas in 1996. (2007)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Old Rip at the Eastland County Courthouse — 21 mi
  A horned lizard in a glass-topped casket in the 1928 Eastland courthouse, the creature said to have come out alive from the old building's cornerstone after thirty-one years.
• Lake Mineral Wells State Park and Trailway — 32 mi
  A Cross Timbers park on the old Camp Wolters grounds, built around a 1922 water-supply lake for a spa town, with Penitentiary Hollow's rock climbing and a 20-mile trailway.

More markers nearby

• Mount Marion Cemetery — steps away
• Bethel Strawn — 0.8 mi
• James Nesbit Stuart House — 1.0 mi
• Mingus Baptist Church — 4.4 mi