Present Home of XXI Club

Edith Menefee started the XXI Club by inviting friends to Mrs. Paul Waples's home, and the name came from a first limit of twenty-one members that rose repeatedly while the name stayed. The first course of study was Washington Irving. On February 26, 1896, J. T. Munson gave the club a $4,000 check and a deed to two lots, on condition that it raise $2,000 more; Andrew Carnegie sent $1,700 after Menefee wrote him. In 1897 it was a charter member of the Texas Federation of Women's Clubs. The Handbook dates its start to 1876.

What the plaque says

Present Home of XXI Club Founded Oct. 14, 1890, by ten early social leaders. A charter member, Texas Federation of Women's Clubs. Its 2-story brick hall, built 1896, was the first woman's clubhouse in Texas. Had facilities for music, drama, art. Gave Denison its first free public library, 1896-1935. (1966)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Eisenhower Birthplace State Historic Site — 0.7 mi
  The small frame house beside the Katy tracks in Denison where Dwight Eisenhower was born in 1890, bought by townspeople in 1946 and given to Texas in 1958.
• Eisenhower State Park — 5.1 mi
  A bluff-top park on Lake Texoma opened in 1958 on land leased from the Corps of Engineers, in the Red River country of Fort Johnson, Colbert's Ferry and the Butterfield stages.
• Hagerman National Wildlife Refuge — 12 mi
  A 1946 refuge on the Big Mineral Arm of Lake Texoma, laid over land bought for Denison Dam and the site of the vanished railroad town of Hagerman, now a winter stop for geese.
• Choctaw Cultural Center — 16 mi
  The Choctaw Nation's history told from the Chahta side at Calera, with galleries from Nanih Waiya to the Trail of Tears and the reservation today, a living village and daily stickball.

More markers nearby

• First Presbyterian Church — steps away
• Site of Saint Francis Xavier Academy — steps away
• Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railroad — 0.3 mi
• Waples-Platter Grocery Company — 0.3 mi