Monaville Independent School District

Monaville took its name from a child. Daniel C. Singletary opened the area's first post office and grocery store in 1886 and named the community for his daughter Mona. The post office stopped serving the farm country in 1913, but the school and a cotton gin kept the place going. The Handbook of Texas counts 75 people in 1941 and 180 in 1990 near Harris Creek in central Waller County, a farming and ranching settlement with one business by the late 1980s.

What the plaque says

Monaville Independent School District Monaville, Aurora, and Bracy Island schools opened in this area during the last quarter of the 19th century when many rural schools were established throughout Waller County. Bracy Island School, established nearby sometime prior to 1890, and Monaville School, located at this site, constituted School District No. 13 in 1893-94. Aurora School, located about 5 miles south of here, opened in 1898. In 1903-1904 the three schools had a combined enrollment of 146 students. In 1904 William and Ella M. Wright deeded one acre of land here to the Monaville Community School District. Monaville, Aurora and Bracy Island schools continued to serve the Monaville rural community until about the mid-1920s when both Aurora and Bracy Island schools were closed. In 1930 efforts by the state to create geographic high school units resulted in the consolidation of a number of districts in the area, including the Sunnyside School (about 5 miles SW), into the Monaville Independent School District. Monaville High School became a 3-year institution in 1931. The area's rural population began to decline after the 1930s Depression. By 1953 Monaville's rural schools had closed and area students were enrolled in the Pattison and Hempstead Independent School Districts. (1994)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• San Felipe de Austin State Historic Site — 11 mi
  Stephen F. Austin's colonial capital on a Brazos bluff, the town of the Consultation and the first Texas newspapers, burned by its own garrison in the Runaway Scrape of 1836.
• Attwater Prairie Chicken National Wildlife Refuge — 24 mi
  Ten thousand acres of native coastal prairie northeast of Eagle Lake, kept for a critically endangered grouse, many of whose birds are hatched in captivity and released here.

More markers nearby

• Norris Wright Cuney — 3.4 mi
• Site of Groce's Ferry — 5.9 mi
• Judge Edwin Waller — 8.0 mi
• Isaac Best — 8.6 mi