Texas Bar Association

The Texas Bar Association was voluntary, and the Handbook of Texas shows how little that covered. A Galveston Bar Association formed in 1868 with thirty-five lawyers, the first permanent bar organization in the state, and served as the model. After 1903 the legislature required a written examination, and applicants fell from about 900 licensed in 1896-97 to ninety who sat the new test. When the State Bar Act was signed on April 12, 1939, only about 3,000 of 7,500 lawyers belonged. An attorney general's ruling on the $4 fee helped lift the new bar to 8,523 members by 1941.

What the plaque says

Texas Bar Association Independent lawyers and representatives from 46 Texas law firms called a meeting in 1882 to create a statewide association. They organized the Texas Bar Association at the Electric Pavilion in Galveston (south of this site) on July 15. J. H. McLeary of San Antonio served as first chairman and Thomas J. Devine, also of San Antonio, was first president. The stated goals of the association were to advance the science of jurisprudence, promote uniformity of legislation in the administration of justice in the state, uphold the honor of the legal profession, and encourage cordial interchange among members. The association's primary task in the early 1920s was the formation of a State Bar, which every lawyer practicing in Texas would be required to join and support. This goal was achieved in 1939, when Gov. W. Lee O'Daniel signed legislation creating the State Bar of Texas. Angus Wynne, president of the Texas Bar Association, became the first president of the State Bar. The Texas Bar Association ceased operations soon after the creation of the State Bar. The association held its final meeting in Fort Worth in July 1940, at which time it merged with the State Bar. (1989)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• 1859 Ashton Villa — 0.3 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 — 0.3 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 — 0.5 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.
• Moody Mansion — 0.5 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.

More markers nearby

• George Campbell Childress — steps away
• The Rt. Rev. Monsignor James Martin Kirwin — steps away
• Rabbi Henry Cohen — steps away
• Norris Wright Cuney — steps away