Site of Marshall University

The Handbook of Texas gives the university a plain, practical start. Chartered on January 18, 1842, it opened that year with Virgil M. DuBose as first president and Andrew Jackson Fowler as first teacher, in a building of hewn logs. Peter Whetstone granted a ten-acre tract in March 1843. A new brick building cost $10,000 in 1851. The female department was set up as a separate school in 1850. The public school system absorbed the university in 1910, though the board of trustees continued to operate for a while.

What the plaque says

Site of Marshall University A pioneer institution of higher education incorporated January 19, 1842. Granted four leagues of land for its support by the Republic of Texas. The leading educational institution in northeast Texas until the Civil War. It later became a part of the public school system of Marshall.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Starr Family Home State Historic Site — 0.3 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.
• Harrison County Historical Museum — 0.4 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 — 0.6 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.
• Jefferson Historical Museum — 15 mi
  A four-floor museum in Jefferson's 1888-90 federal post office and courthouse, with rooms for African-American history, Jewish heritage, the Caddo and Diamond Bessie, bought by the historical society in 1965 for $8,100.

More markers nearby

• Trinity Episcopal Church — steps away
• First Baptist Church — 0.2 mi
• Bethesda Baptist Church — 0.3 mi
• Fred Lewis — 0.3 mi