Historical Marker
Nellie Gray Robertson
Granbury, Hood County · Texas
Erected 2014
Nellie Robertson was one of three women Governor Pat Neff named to a special Supreme Court on January 1, 1925, and he made her chief justice. The case was Johnson v. Darr, over El Paso land claimed by trustees of the Woodmen of the World. Every sitting justice belonged to the order and was disqualified, and the Woodmen admitted no women. Robertson fell short of the seven years of practice the constitution required, so the court was reshuffled a day before its first hearing. It ruled for the Woodmen on May 23, 1925.
What the plaque says
Nellie Gray Robertson Born in 1894 as the sixth and only daughter of William Jarrett Robertson and Arminda Barton Robertson, Nellie Gray Robertson grew up amid financial hardships in Hood County. She entered the University of Texas in the fall of 1912 and attended for six years. Nellie passed the Texas Bar in 1918 to join the male-dominated profession of law. Nellie returned to Hood County to run in the Democratic Party primary for county attorney. She became the first female county attorney in the State of Texas. Between 1918 and 1926, Nellie was elected county attorney for three terms. In 1922, she ran for county judge of Hood County against four men and lost. However, in May of the next year, Nellie returned to the county attorney's seat. She was named to sit as chief justice on the first all-woman Texas Supreme Court in 1925 but she could not serve because of the rule that any justice had to have practiced law for at least seven years. She was a couple of months shy of this requirement. Nellie lived at home with her mother on Travis Street in Granbury and never married. After Nellie left elected office in 1926, she moved to New York City to write law books for Doubleday Publishing. Nellie returned to Texas to work for the Stewart Abstract and Title Guarantee Company in Houston in 1927. She was promoted to manage the Stewart Title Company in Beaumont where she worked for 20 years. Nellie was also a partner in the Beaumont law firm Stewart, Burgess, Morris, and Robertson. Nellie was very active in the community, serving as grand matron of the Granbury chapter of the Order of the Eastern Star. Nellie Robertson helped open the doors for women to become involved in politics and positions of power in Texas. (2014)
Where it stands
32.44253, -97.78701 · Directions
Worth the stop nearby
- Granbury Courthouse Square — steps awayA National Register square of limestone storefronts around W. C. Dodson's Second Empire courthouse, whose clock tower citizens saved after a 1968 tornado.
- Acton State Historic Site — 6.0 miThe smallest state historic site in Texas, a grave plot holding Elizabeth Crockett, widow of David Crockett, under a 1913 statue of a pioneer woman shading her eyes toward the west.
- Dinosaur Valley State Park — 14 miTheropod and sauropod trackways of about 113 million years ago in the bed of the Paluxy River, a National Natural Landmark where R. T. Bird found the first distinct sauropod tracks in 1937.
- Cleburne State Park — 19 miA 1930s Civilian Conservation Corps park on the old Chisholm Trail crossing country, with a spring-fed lake, a hand-carved three-tiered spillway and a CCC bridge in Johnson County.