Richard A. Pauley

Dick Pauley's last night began on a freight train out of Brownwood. Two men riding on top of a car refused the conductor's order to get off, and when the train stopped at Santa Anna the conductor telegraphed ahead to Coleman asking for the sheriff. Pauley went to the railroad yard and was shot as he climbed the ladder. He lived two more days. A posse of more than a thousand men later caught the two suspects. He had been elected sheriff only two years earlier, in 1923, and left a wife and a son.

What the plaque says

Richard A. Pauley (March 20, 1882-May 16, 1925) A man who achieved boyhood wish to become a law officer, Pauley was a rancher before his election in 1923 to office of Coleman County sheriff. He was widely respected as a true gentleman. Often he did not carry a gun, preferring to convince fugitives that the law would protect, not hurt, them. He was shot by 2 stowaways while investigating a train car. His wife Kate Dancer Pauley and son Russell survived him. Recorded - 1968

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Carnegie Library of Ballinger — 24 mi
  A 1909 limestone library with an Ionic portico in a railroad town the Santa Fe created in 1886, one of the few Texas Carnegie libraries still working in its original building.
• Z. I. Hale Museum and Rock Hotel — 29 mi
  A free museum in a Winters optometrist's office, a 1909 railroad hotel and a 1927 implement dealership, with Rogers Hornsby's hometown memorabilia and a 1912 horse-drawn cotton picker.

More markers nearby

• Valera Cemetery — steps away
• Centennial School — 4.2 mi
• Western Trail Marker — 9.8 mi
• Robert M. Coleman — 9.8 mi