Site of Marshall Masonic Female Institute

The Handbook of Texas says the institute began as the female department of Marshall University, became a separate school in 1850 and operated for more than fifty years. Stephen F. Austin State University's Heritage Center, in its entry for the old junior high at 201 South College, lists the institute among that site's earlier schools and dates its closing to 1882, for low enrollment, with Marshall High School organized there in the 1890s. The two accounts do not agree on how long the school ran.

What the plaque says

Site of Marshall Masonic Female Institute School originated as Female Department of Marshall University, chartered Jan. 18, 1842, by Republic of Texas. Marshall Masonic Lodge No. 22 chartered the Female Institute as a separate school in 1850. Five lodge members (including city's most prominent men) were on institute's executive board. By 1853, there were fifty-three students and a faculty of five. Two who served longest of the school's five presidents were Dr. Thomas B. Wilson (1850-1858 and 1865-1870) and Dr. Charles B. Stuart (1874-1886). (1969)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Harrison County Historical Museum — 0.2 mi
  Galleries in Marshall's 1901 courthouse that run from the Caddo to the present, with Wiley College, Lady Bird Johnson's inaugural gown and a military gallery across the square in Memorial City Hall.
• Texas and Pacific Railway Depot and Museum — 0.3 mi
  The only surviving building of the Texas and Pacific shops at Marshall, a 1912 Mission Revival depot saved from demolition in the 1990s, still an Amtrak stop, with a railway museum and a Mikado locomotive.
• Starr Family Home State Historic Site — 0.4 mi
  Maplecroft, the 1871 Greek Revival house Frank Starr built in Marshall, with Ruth Starr Blake's glass and china, an 1880s kitchen restored in 2019 and a retirement home built for a formerly enslaved person.
• Caddo Lake National Wildlife Refuge — 14 mi
  Wetlands and woods on part of a former ammunition plant, now a refuge for wood ducks, prothonotary warblers and alligator snapping turtles, with four easy trails and a free visitor center on a Ramsar lake.

More markers nearby

• Sam Houston's 1857 Campaign in Marshall — steps away
• Girlhood Home of Southern Beauty Lucy Holcombe Pickens — steps away
• Site of Temple Moses Montefiore — steps away
• James L. Farmer, Jr. — steps away