Robert Edward Nail, Jr.

Nail was born in Wolfe City on September 13, 1908, and came to Albany as a baby. He graduated from high school in 1926, the year a prolific shallow oil field came in on the Cook Ranch of his uncle, W. I. Cook. At the Lawrenceville School, Thornton Wilder, then an English teacher there, took an interest in him. At Princeton, where his classmates included Joshua Logan, Jimmy Stewart and Jose Ferrer, he was class poet and president of the Theatre Intime, wrote the acclaimed play Time of Their Lives and graduated Phi Beta Kappa in 1933.

What the plaque says

Robert (Bobby) Nail graduated from Albany High School in 1926. In New Jersey, at Lawrenceville Prep. School and Princeton U., his literary activities were highly acclaimed. Nail directed theater groups in Fort Worth, Dallas and Abilene before returning to Albany. In 1938, he wrote Doctor Shackelford's Paradise, which became Fort Griffin Fandangle, the oldest outdoor musical in Texas. His production of the nativity is still presented in Albany. He was named outstanding citizen of Albany in 1947, and appointed to the Fine Arts commission of Texas in 1966. His legacy can be found in the Old Jail Art Center, Robert E. Nail Archives, and Robert Nail Scholarship Fund. (2013)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Old Jail Art Center — steps away
  An art museum in Albany's 1878 stone jail, where the masons carved their initials to be sure of pay, now holding Chinese tomb figures and works by Picasso and Klee.
• Fort Griffin State Historic Site — 14 mi
  The ruins of an 1867 cavalry post on a plateau above the Clear Fork of the Brazos, judged unfit for habitation and used nine more years, now home to the official state longhorn herd.
• Fort Phantom Hill — 23 mi
  A field of lone stone chimneys north of Abilene, left by the fire after the Army left in 1854, later a stage stop and a buffalo-hide town of more than 500 people.
• Conrad Hilton Center and Mobley Hotel — 29 mi
  The 40-room oil-boom hotel in Cisco that Conrad Hilton bought in 1919 when a bank deal fell through, now a museum of the Hilton start and of Cisco's 1927 Santa Claus bank robbery.

More markers nearby

• Shackelford County — steps away
• Texas Cattle Trail — steps away
• Lt. Col. William E. Dyess — steps away
• Dr. Jack Shackelford — steps away