Sarah Ridge Paschal Pix

Sarah Ridge came from a plantation family and held enslaved people in Texas. After her 1850 divorce from George Paschal she kept the Galveston house and a dozen slaves, and at Smith Point the ranch she ran with Charles Pix counted six enslaved people on 520 acres. She reportedly registered a lizard brand in 1856, the same mark her father, Major Ridge, had burned on his cattle. Her last fight was legal: in 1880 she sued for divorce from Pix at Wallisville and won after a celebrated trial. She died on the ranch in 1891.

What the plaque says

Sarah Ridge Paschal Pix Born on the family plantation in the Cherokee Nation near present Rome, Georgia, Sarah Ridge (1814-1891) attended mission schools and girls' seminary. Her father Major Ridge was a Cherokee leader and friend of Sam Houston. Major Ridge, Sarah's brother John, and cousin were later assassinated for supporting the treaty which traded Indian lands for acreage in the West. This treaty led to the infamous "Trail of Tears." Sarah married a lawyer, George Washington Paschal, in 1837 and they settled in Arkansas. In 1847 the family and slaves moved to Galveston. During the 1850 yellow fever epidemic Sarah opened her home and treated many of the ill with an Indian remedy. After Sarah and Paschal were divorced, she married Charles C. Sisson Pix, an Englishman, in 1856 in the home of Republic of Texas President Mirabeau B. Lamar. Sarah traded her Galveston home for this land of smith Point soon after her marriage. Pix cattle ranged from here to present Liberty. While Pix served in the Confederate Army, Sarah built the ranch into a large operation. With the end of slavery, the ranch declined. After Sarah divorced Pix in 1880, she remained on the ranch with her widowed daughter Agnes Paschal McNeir and two grandsons. Heirs still own the land. (1979)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Texas Seaport Museum and the Elissa — 16 mi
  An iron barque launched in Aberdeen in 1877 that called at Galveston twice, ended up smuggling in the Adriatic, and was bought back from a Greek scrapyard to sail again from Pier 22.
• The Strand — 16 mi
  Five blocks of iron-front brick buildings near the harbor that were once called the Wall Street of the Southwest, emptied after 1900 and brought back by preservationists from the 1960s.
• 1892 Bishop's Palace — 16 mi
  Nicholas Clayton's stone house on Broadway for the railroad lawyer Walter Gresham, later home to Galveston's Catholic bishops and one of the most admired Victorian houses in the country.
• 1859 Ashton Villa — 17 mi
  A brick Italianate house on Broadway, built with enslaved labor in 1859, whose lawn has held Galveston's Juneteenth commemoration of General Orders, No. 3 every year since 1979.

More markers nearby

• Smith Point Community Church — 0.4 mi
• Graydon — 12 mi
• Bolivar Point — 12 mi
• Point Bolivar — 12 mi