Site of Bralley-Pendleton School

The school's first teacher was Mary Womac, who began in 1882 with about twenty students. Around 1890 the Walcott Institute building was moved to the northeast corner of town to house the school. Enrollment ran from 118 to 250 over the years. In 1911, 188 students shared two teachers, W. J. Taylor, who was also principal, and Eva Pollard, and early teachers earned about $50 a month. In 1912 the board hired Irene Higgs as an assistant at $30 to ease a load of nearly 200 pupils. The name changed to Pendleton on May 4, 1959.

What the plaque says

Site of Bralley-Pendleton School The first school for Africa Americans in Honey Grove began in 1882 with 20 students and one teacher. The school was named for F. M. Bralley, an early superintendent. By 1911 there were 188 students and two teachers. Bralley became a high school in 1925 when Smith Hill School opened for elementary grades, but the two schools were joined again in 1934. In 1959 the school was renamed in honor of its long-term principal John W. Pendleton. After the Honey Grove schools were integrated in 1965-66, the Bralley-Pendleton School buildings were sold and razed. (1997)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Sam Rayburn House State Historic Site — 18 mi
  The two-story farmhouse west of Bonham that the longtime Speaker of the House built in 1916 and kept as his home, left as he lived in it and open as a museum since 1975.
• Evergreen Cemetery — 21 mi
  Paris's town cemetery since 1866, with a carved-stone gallery that includes the Babcock monument in cowboy boots, and the grave of the three-year-old whose death led to the 1893 lynching of Henry Smith.
• Sam Bell Maxey House State Historic Site — 21 mi
  The Italian-villa-style house in Paris, finished in 1868 with a lawyer's fees, where a Confederate major general turned U.S. senator and two later generations of his family lived.
• Cooper Lake State Park — 21 mi
  Two units on Jim Chapman Lake, a Corps reservoir proposed in the late 1930s, stalled by a lawsuit until 1984 and dedicated in 1991, with a 10.5-mile equestrian trail and wildlife land around it.

More markers nearby

• Main Street Presbyterian Church — 0.3 mi
• Honey Grove Lodge No. 164, A. F. & A. M. — 0.3 mi
• First Baptist Church of Honey Grove — 0.3 mi
• Honey Grove City Hall — 0.3 mi