Palacios Preparatory School

Palacios Preparatory School ran in a carriage house and barn. Martha Pearl McGuire opened it in September 1910 behind the family home on East Bay Boulevard, in a frame building with gables on all four sides and an unfinished interior that a curtain could divide. About ten students enrolled at first, about forty by the end. Two public programs a year, in December and May, featured costumes such as frog suits. Abel and Allen Pierce, nephews of Shanghai Pierce, enrolled. In World War II the building became an apartment for men from Camp Hulen; it was demolished in 1965.

What the plaque says

Palacios Preparatory School Opened in 1910, the Palacios Preparatory School was located at this site, behind the family home of its founder, Martha Pearl Dickson McGuire (1876-1962), and her family. Music instruction was given in upstairs rooms of the home. It was the first Palacios school to offer courses in cultural arts in addition to academics. Students performed twice a year in public programs. As many as sixty pupils were enrolled, and parents often traded labor on school projects for childrens' tuition. The school closed in 1918, when the McGuire family moved to Palestine, Texas. Texas Sesquicentennial 1836-1986

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Indianola — 22 mi
  The site of Texas's second port, where Morgan's steamships, Army freight and the first refrigerated beef passed until the hurricanes of 1875 and 1886, now mostly under Matagorda Bay.
• Half Moon Reef Lighthouse and Linnville — 25 mi
  The last screw-pile lighthouse of the Texas coast, brought ashore at Port Lavaca, a town founded by refugees from Linnville, the port Buffalo Hump's Comanches burned in August 1840.

More markers nearby

• Texas Baptist Encampment Grounds — steps away
• First Baptist Church of Palacios — 0.2 mi
• St. John's Episcopal Church — 0.3 mi
• First United Methodist Church of Palacios — 0.3 mi