Site of the Home of Michael Branaman Menard

The Menard House is the oldest house on Galveston Island, and it is reported to have come in pieces from Maine. Michel Menard built it in 1838 on an outlot beyond the city limits, probably for his second wife, Adeline Catherine Maxwell, who died that summer. He added two wings about 1850, and the house is said to have hosted Galveston's first Mardi Gras ball in 1853. Edwin Ketchum, the city's police chief during the 1900 storm, bought it in 1880, and his family kept it until the 1970s.

What the plaque says

Site of the Home of Michael Branaman Menard (1805 - 1856) A signer of the Texas Declaration of Independence. Founder of the city of Galveston. Member of the Congress of the Republic of Texas.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Moody Mansion — 0.6 mi
  A four-story, 28,000-square-foot house on Broadway, finished in 1895, that W. L. Moody Jr. bought just after the 1900 storm and his family kept until Hurricane Alicia in 1983.
• 1859 Ashton Villa — 0.8 mi
  A brick Italianate house on Broadway, built with enslaved labor in 1859, whose lawn has held Galveston's Juneteenth commemoration of General Orders, No. 3 every year since 1979.
• The Strand — 1.2 mi
  Five blocks of iron-front brick buildings near the harbor that were once called the Wall Street of the Southwest, emptied after 1900 and brought back by preservationists from the 1960s.
• Texas Seaport Museum and the Elissa — 1.3 mi
  An iron barque launched in Aberdeen in 1877 that called at Galveston twice, ended up smuggling in the Adriatic, and was bought back from a Greek scrapyard to sail again from Pier 22.

More markers nearby

• The Mexican Telegraph Company_The Zimmermann Telegram — steps away
• Galveston Artillery Club — steps away
• Holy Rosary Catholic Church — steps away
• Gail Borden, Jr. — steps away