Miriam A. Ferguson Birthplace

Miriam Wallace was the daughter of Joseph L. and Eliza Garrison Wallace. The Handbook says she attended Salado College, then Baylor Female College in Belton, and married James Ferguson of Bell County in 1899 at twenty-four. The Salado school was unusual for running twenty-four years on tuition alone. The name Ma came later. Until her 1924 campaign she had devoted herself almost entirely to her husband and two daughters, and that fact together with her initials, M. A., led supporters to call her Ma.

What the plaque says

Miriam A. Ferguson Birthplace A five-room log cabin on this land was the home of Miriam A. Wallace (1875-1961) from her birth until her marriage to James E. Ferguson in 1899. After her husband had been twice elected governor, Mrs. Ferguson became the first woman elected governor of any state. She served two terms, from 1925 to 1927 and from 1933 to 1935. The property was inherited by Mrs. Ferguson and about 1917 was mortgaged to support her husband's political career. The home was destroyed by fire in 1926. (1967)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Temple Railroad and Heritage Museum — 13 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.
• Milam County Courthouse and Jail — 21 mi
  Cameron's 1892 Renaissance Revival courthouse and the 1895 St. Louis-built jail beside it, now the county museum, are listed together on the National Register.
• Williamson County Courthouse — 28 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 — 30 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

• County Line Baptist Church — 3.0 mi
• Woman's Study Club of Holland — 4.9 mi
• Alvin Ailey — 6.3 mi
• Joseph "Joe Tex" Arrington, Jr. — 6.3 mi