Texas A&M University

The plaque names Gathright and moves on. He was a Georgia-born schoolmaster who ran a private boys' school in Mississippi from 1854 to 1876, and in April 1876 the state made him superintendent of public instruction. By October he was Texas A&M's first president. In 1878 he also took on stewardship duties and the presidency of an A&M-sponsored college for Black students, later Prairie View. The board dismissed the whole administration in November 1879. He died on May 24, 1880.

What the plaque says

Texas A&M University The State Legislature authorized the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas April 17, 1871, under terms of the Federal Morrill Act. Constitutionally a part of a chartered, yet-unorganized state university, A&M gained its own directorate in 1875 with Governor Richard Coke as Board President. Brazos Countians provided its 2,416-acre site. Committed to "teach...branches of learning...related to agriculture and mechanic arts...to promote liberal and practical education," A&M opened Oct. 4, 1876, as the first state institution of higher learning actually operating in Texas. Thomas S. Gathright was President. Its original six students in seven academic departments grew to 28,038 students in eleven academic colleges by 1976. Initially an all-male, all-white school, it was desegregated as to color in 1963 and made fully coeducational in 1971. The Legislature recognized its diversified programs and international leadership in education and research by awarding the new name, Texas A&M University, on Aug. 23, 1963. On Sept. 17, 1971, the U.S. Congress made this one of America's first four Sea Grant Colleges. National defense has drawn from Texas A&M thousands of ROTC men, including 29 general officers for World War II. (1978)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• George H.W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum — 2.3 mi
  The library of the forty-first president on the Texas A&M campus, opened in 1997, where George and Barbara Bush and their daughter Robin are buried in a family plot on the grounds.
• Independence and Old Baylor Park — 21 mi
  A crossroads north of Brenham that was the richest town in Texas when it won Baylor University in 1845, refused the railroad, and lost the college to Waco and Belton in 1886.
• Navasota — 22 mi
  A railroad and cotton town where the La Bahia Road crossed the Navasota River, scarred by an 1865 explosion and yellow fever, and the home ground of the songster Mance Lipscomb.
• Fanthorp Inn State Historic Site — 23 mi
  A cedar-log dogtrot cabin of 1834 on the road through Anderson that grew into a seventeen-room inn and post office for travelers of the Republic, kept by one family until 1976.

More markers nearby

• Texas AMC and WWI — 0.8 mi
• Texas A&M Corps of Cadets — 0.8 mi
• Early Texas A&M Campus Housing — 0.9 mi
• Main Drill Field, Texas A&M University — 0.9 mi