Pan American Round Table

Its founder was a ranch woman known as the "cattle queen of Southwest Texas." Florence Terry grew up on The Pendencia, a ranch settlement near Eagle Pass. Widowed in 1908, she took over her husband's three ranches and within two years held more than 100,000 acres and 5,000 cattle in Webb and Dimmit counties. In 1910 she was the only woman delegate to the Trans-Mississippi Congress in San Antonio. She chose the medieval round table as the group's symbol of equality, and its motto came from the Three Musketeers: "One for all and all for one."

What the plaque says

Pan American Round Table Mrs. Florence Terry Griswold (1875-1941), a native Texan reared along the Mexican border, provided aid to refugees of Mexico's 1910 revolution. On October 16, 1916, she and 21 friends met at the historic Menger Hotel to found the Pan American Round Table, a union of women dedicated to mutual knowledge, understanding and friendship among women of the Western Hemisphere. Growing to include 166 tables in 16 countries by 1989, the movement has promoted its goals with such projects as contributions to libraries and awarding of scholarships. (1991)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• The Alamo — steps away
  Mission San Antonio de Valero before it was a fort: a church its builders never finished, a thirteen-day siege in 1836, and the Army gable of 1850-52 that became its emblem.
• La Villita Historic Arts Village — 0.2 mi
  The little village across the river from the presidio, where Cos surrendered San Antonio in 1835, rebuilt by Depression-era youth crews as a working crafts village.
• San Antonio River Walk — 0.2 mi
  A Depression-era park one level below downtown, built because San Antonio refused to pave its river after the 1921 flood, and designed by an architect the project later fired.
• San Fernando Cathedral — 0.5 mi
  The Canary Islanders' parish church on Main Plaza, where Bowie married and Santa Anna raised a red flag, rebuilt in Gothic Revival around the walls of the 1750s church.

More markers nearby

• John Hermann Kampmann — steps away
• Menger Hotel — steps away
• Barbed Wire Demonstration — steps away
• San Antonio Section, National Council of Jewish Women — steps away