Murry Institute

The school stood in Murry League, which a 1946 county history says took its name from William Murry, the original grantee. The Rev. Joshua Clark and William L. Coppedge came from Haywood County, Tennessee, in wagons in fall 1853 and helped raise a large frame building. When it grew too small, classes moved into the Methodist church. Virgil M. DuBose joined as co-principal in 1857. His son later wrote that by May 1861 all the young men in the school had gone to the war, and the institute became a memory.

What the plaque says

Murry Institute In community called Murry League, for original land grantee. First school in Upshur County (1853-61). Founded by Tennesseans, Rev. Joshua Clark and Wm. L. Coppedge. Coeducational boarding school. Famous for excellence. Taught engineering, higher mathematics, Greek, Latin, along with common subjects. Was closed during Civil War. (1964)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Daingerfield State Park — 15 mi
  A pine-and-hardwood park built in 1935-39 by a white and a Black Civilian Conservation Corps company, with a dammed lake, Bass Lodge and a 2.4-mile loop trail around the water.
• Jefferson Historical Museum — 21 mi
  A four-floor museum in Jefferson's 1888-90 federal post office and courthouse, with rooms for African-American history, Jewish heritage, the Caddo and Diamond Bessie, bought by the historical society in 1965 for $8,100.
• Excelsior House Hotel — 21 mi
  A brick-and-timber hotel at 211 West Austin that began as a river captain's boarding house in 1858 and was revived by a garden club in 1959, and still takes guests with rosewood furniture.
• Texas and Pacific Railway Depot and Museum — 26 mi
  The only surviving building of the Texas and Pacific shops at Marshall, a 1912 Mission Revival depot saved from demolition in the 1990s, still an Amtrak stop, with a railway museum and a Mikado locomotive.

More markers nearby

• Port Bolivar & Iron Ore Railroad — 0.6 mi
• Site of the Guarantee State Bank — 0.7 mi
• Old Coffeeville, C. S. A. — 3.8 mi
• Col. John Hamilton McNairy — 3.8 mi