Middleton Tate Johnson

The plaque gives one line to a man who ran for governor four times and lost each time. The Handbook of Texas records his bids in 1851, 1853, 1855 and 1857, after a failed run for lieutenant governor in 1849. Johnson built a cotton plantation near Marrow Bone Springs in 1848 and is reported to have held more enslaved people than any other Tarrant County planter. The settlement around his house became Johnson's Station. In 1860 he led a much-criticized Ranger campaign against the Comanches. Though he opposed secession, he raised a Confederate cavalry regiment.

What the plaque says

Middleton Tate Johnson The Father of Tarrant County. A member of the Congress of the Republic. Born in South Carolina, 1810. Died at Austin, Texas, May 15, 1866. Johnson County was named in his honor.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Cedar Ridge Preserve — 10 mi
  A 633-acre Audubon Dallas preserve at the western edge of Dallas County, with about nine miles of trails through prairie, woodland and escarpment hills.
• Tarrant County Courthouse — 13 mi
  A pink-granite courthouse of 1895 on the bluff where the Army set up Fort Worth in 1849, in a county named for the man who led the 1841 attack on the Native villages of Village Creek.
• Fort Worth Stockyards — 15 mi
  The brick-street cattle market where Armour and Swift built packing plants in 1902, now a National Register district with a Coliseum, a museum and a longhorn drive twice a day.
• Kimbell Art Museum — 15 mi
  Louis Kahn's cycloid-vaulted museum of 1972, built from Kay Kimbell's bequest and joined in 2013 by Renzo Piano's pavilion for the exhibitions the Kahn galleries could not hold.

More markers nearby

• Marrow Bone Spring — 0.3 mi
• First Christian Church — 1.5 mi
• First Baptist Church of Arlington — 1.9 mi
• North Side School — 2.2 mi