Stringtown

The road the farms faced is older than Stringtown. Fray Isidro Felix de Espinosa traveled it in 1709 and 1716, and traffic grew after 1840, when Capt. Joseph Wiehl's infantry company blazed a shortcut from Austin to San Marcos. James Purdy Matthews's home became a stage stop in 1851, and a post office opened in the Dailey brothers' store in 1872. Frederick Law Olmsted, Jacob De Cordova, and Edward King and J. Wells Champney all remarked on the community's prosperity. Under Woodrow Wilson, the San Marcos-New Braunfels stretch became the first road segment in Texas to be tarred.

What the plaque says

Stringtown John Drayton Pitts (1798-1861) was born, according to family lore, on a ship as his parents sailed to America. A civil engineer by profession, Pitts became interested in politics and in 1841 became a member of the Georgia House of Representatives. The next year, Pitts and his brother-in-law, James Vickers, took a trip to Texas and encouraged family and friends to follow. Eleven families, including those of John's brothers, William and Edward, settled in Grimes County. John D. Pitts became an influential politician, living in Austin while serving as adjutant general. In 1847, Pitts and his friend, General Edward Burleson, visited the land Burleson acquired after the Battle of San Jacinto, located six miles southwest of San Marcos Springs. Impressed by the idyllic setting, Pitts purchased the 640 acres from Burleson. This early organized colony in Hays County consisted of family and friends of John D. Pitts. Their farmhouses, strung out at half-mile intervals along the Austin-San Antonio Road, led to the name Stringtown. The farms, often referred to as model farms, survived early hardships and the 1857 drought. Although not a town, Stringtown soon rivaled San Marcos in population. Pitts donated land near his home for a church and school. Following the Civil War and emancipation, crops were divided evenly with former slaves, and many were given land. The labor void was filled by Mexican farmers who brought their vibrant culture to the area. Pitts Cemetery, located nearby, was established in 1851. It serves as a reminder of the determined pioneers who settled the area and braved the hardships of early Texas. (2017)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Spring Lake and the Meadows Center — 5.1 mi
  The headsprings of the San Marcos River, among the longest-inhabited places in North America, once an amusement park with a swimming pig and now seen from glass-bottom boats.
• Gruene Historic District — 9.9 mi
  A cotton town on the Guadalupe that the boll weevil emptied, rescued in the 1970s by a kayaking architecture student, with a dance hall that says it has never closed.
• Sophienburg Museum and Archives — 13 mi
  The hilltop where Prince Carl of Solms-Braunfels raised the Adelsverein's headquarters in 1845, now the museum and archive of the German colony that became New Braunfels.
• Lockhart Courthouse Square — 19 mi
  A cotton-era courthouse town named the Barbecue Capital of Texas, built near the 1840 Plum Creek fight that followed the killing of Comanche leaders at peace talks.

More markers nearby

• Pitts Cemetery — 0.2 mi
• First Baptist Church of San Marcos — 0.6 mi
• King's Highway - Camino Real - Old San Antonio Road — 2.2 mi
• Riley's Tavern — 3.2 mi