Site of Marvin College

Marvin College was more than the music and chemistry the plaque names. The Handbook of Texas says the Northwest Texas Conference chose Waxahachie in November 1868 and that Emory W. Rogers donated forty acres for a three-story classroom building and two dormitories. John W. P. McKenzie, founder of McKenzie Institute near Clarksville, was its first manager. Courses included geology, military science and telegraphy, a campus newspaper began, and a $1,200 telescope went into the observatory. The legislature chartered the college in 1873, but debts cost the church the property in 1878 until a committee bought it back.

What the plaque says

Site of Marvin College The Northwest Texas Conference, Methodist Episcopal Church South, built a college named for Bishop E.M. Marvin at the site in 1870-71. Waxahachie Methodists and others gave land, services, and money to develop the college. Distinctions were attained in music and chemistry teaching. The astronomical observatory was an outstanding feature. The enrollment reached about 250. Financially troubled, the college stressed practical studies in the 1880s, but closed in 1884. The City of Waxahachie then bought the property and used it to house its original public school. (1977)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Ellis County Courthouse — 0.5 mi
  J. Riely Gordon's courthouse of 1897 in Pecos red sandstone and pink granite, with twenty-one carved stone faces and two cornerstones left by a quarrel over its building.
• Cedar Ridge Preserve — 18 mi
  A 633-acre Audubon Dallas preserve at the western edge of Dallas County, with about nine miles of trails through prairie, woodland and escarpment hills.
• Petroleum Industry Park — 30 mi
  The pipes and drilling tower mark where a city water well struck oil on June 9, 1894, the start of the first Texas field to produce oil and gas in important quantities.

More markers nearby

• Central Presbyterian Church — 0.2 mi
• Site of a Confederate Powder Mill — 0.4 mi
• First United Methodist Church of Waxahachie — 0.4 mi
• N. P. Sims Library and Lyceum — 0.6 mi