Prairieville

Three dates float around Prairieville's founding. The plaque says Reiersen settled here in 1847; the Handbook of Texas's Prairieville entry says his Norwegians moved in 1848, and its biography of Reiersen says 1850, when fourteen families left sickness at Brownsboro. What stays steady is the writer. His 1844 Pathfinder for Norwegian Emigrants argued Texas would give ordinary people far more opportunity than Norway, and it made him a controversial figure at home. He died here in 1864 and was buried on his farm. The post office ran from 1854 until 1954.

What the plaque says

Prairieville (site within Mercer Colony land grant) Established by colonizer Johan Reinert Reiersen (1810-64). The 1845 founder of Brownboro (Normandy) in present Henderson County, who settled here in 1847. Elise Tvede Waerenskjold, Reiersen's aide on his magazine "Norway and Texas", spurred migration by continuing to write for Norwegian journals. In 1848 colonists organized a church, Erick Bache in 1853 built a hotel which served as post office and station on two stage lines. By 1857 Prairieville had about 80 Norwegians living as neighbors to Anglo-Americans, Danes, Frenchmen, Germans, Swedes, and other early settlers. (1971)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• No. 1 British Flying Training School Museum — 19 mi
  A free museum at Terrell's airport where about 2,200 RAF cadets learned to fly between 1941 and 1945, with logbooks, uniforms, letters and original training aircraft.

More markers nearby

• Capt. Edward Thomas Broughton and the Johnson Guards — steps away
• Mabank — 7.7 mi
• First Presbyterian Church of Mabank — 7.8 mi
• Roddy Lodge No. 734, A.F. & A.M. — 7.8 mi