Site of Dial Schools

Sam Rayburn's classroom years were short. The Handbook of Texas says he entered East Texas Normal College at eighteen, alternated terms of study with teaching and finished the three-year course in two years. After two years of teaching he left to read law, inspired in part by Senator Joseph Weldon Bailey, and in 1906 won a seat in the Texas House. The plaque places his teaching in the Dial community from 1903 to 1905, a community that already had an academy and a post office. The Handbook itself does not name Dial.

What the plaque says

Site of Dial Schools School in this community was held 1840-80 in a log cabin used also for church and community activities. Cotton gin and grist mill of Dial family attracted settlers. Dial Post Office opened May 24, 1880. In July 1880 a site was provided for academy which gained renown under a superior educator, Robert W. Lane (1825-91), a Confederate veteran. One of later (1903-05) teachers in Dial community was the Hon. Sam Rayburn (1882-1961), United States Congressman from Texas 1913-61, who set a record of 17 years as Speaker of the House of Representatives. (1972)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Cooper Lake State Park — 16 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.
• Sam Rayburn House State Historic Site — 20 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.

More markers nearby

• Site of Fort Lyday — 1.7 mi
• Giles Academy — 5.4 mi
• Site of Bralley-Pendleton School — 6.0 mi
• Main Street Presbyterian Church — 6.2 mi