Texas Confederate Woman's Home

State ownership took three tries. Governor S. W. T. Lanham vetoed a bill to transfer the home in 1905, and voters rejected a constitutional amendment for state ownership in 1907 before approving it by a wide margin in 1911. A. O. Watson designed the first two-story building, with fifteen bedrooms. Three women were admitted at the opening on June 3, 1908, sixteen lived there by 1909, and eighteen at the transfer. A 1913 brick addition by Page Brothers added twenty-four bedrooms. The home held between eighty and 110 residents from 1920 through 1935, and fell to fifty-five by 1945.

What the plaque says

Texas Confederate Woman's Home The Texas Confederate Woman's home opened in 1908 and provided a home for over three thousand wives and widows of Confederate Veterans. Potential residents were wives or widows of honorably discharged Confederate soldiers, women who could prove active participation in the Confederate War effort, and women 60 years or older without a means of support. The Confederate Men's Home began in Austin in 1884 and the Albert Sidney Johnston Chapter #105 of the Texas Division of the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) made visits, brought gifts, food and clothing to the veterans. Under the leadership of President Katie Daffan, the Texas UDC began coordination and fundraising to secure a home for needy confederate wives and widows. Through dinners, events, concerts and individual donations, the Texas UDC purchased property and constructed a Richardson Romanesque revival style structure. In addition to several bedrooms and bathrooms, the home featured a parlor, dining area and a hospital. UDC chapters from all over the state donated furnishings for the home. Due to the cost to maintain the home, the UDC transferred the home to the state of Texas on Dec. 23, 1911. An annex was built that doubled the size and increased the capacity, and a hospital was erected in 1916. The state legislature established the board of control to operate the home in 1920, and then in 1949, responsibility transferred to the board for Texas State Hospitals and special schools. This home provided for more than 3,400 indigent wives and widows of Confederate veterans and operated until 1963, when the last residents were transferred to private nursing homes. (2013)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• LBJ Presidential Library — 1.1 mi
  A ten-story travertine archive on the University of Texas campus holding 45 million pages from a presidency of civil rights laws, the War on Poverty and Vietnam.
• Harry Ransom Center — 1.2 mi
  The University of Texas archive where a Gutenberg Bible and the earliest surviving camera photograph are always on view, free, beside the papers of Watergate and the movies.
• Bullock Texas State History Museum — 1.5 mi
  The state's history museum at the head of Congress Avenue, built around the hull of La Salle's ship La Belle, raised from Matagorda Bay with 1.8 million artifacts.
• Texas State Capitol — 1.8 mi
  Austin's fourth statehouse, a Renaissance Revival capitol of 1888 that stands 311 feet to its Goddess of Liberty and was restored after the 1983 fire.

More markers nearby

• Jane Yelvington McCallum — 0.4 mi
• John Elbridge Hines — 0.6 mi
• Elisabet Ney — 0.6 mi
• Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary — 0.6 mi