The Commercial Bank

Anna Martin's fortune began with a borrowed $150. Her husband, Karl, lost his Hedwigs Hill store in the Civil War and was an invalid from 1864, so she bought groceries on credit, reopened the store and ran it as a stage stop and post office on the San Antonio-El Paso mail line. She traded dry goods for cattle, hauled freight, bought wool and cotton directly from ranchers, and sold the first barbed wire used in Mason County. In time she held some 50,000 acres in Mason, Llano and Gillespie counties.

What the plaque says

The Commercial Bank German immigrant Anna Mebus (1843-1925) came to Texas in 1858 and married her merchant cousin, Karl Martin (1828-1879). After his death she continued to operate their Mason store and post office, and by the 1880s was handling the cash of area ranchers. In 1901 she helped establish and became president of The Commercial Bank, opened with $3,000 capital. Before a bank building was acquired in 1903, cash was taken home at night. Her sons, Charles (1861-1940) and Max (1863-1941), served as bank officers and helped coin the bank's motto, "Safety-Service-Silence." The family operated the bank until 1958. Texas Sesquicentennial 1836 - 1986

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Fort Mason — steps away
  A reconstructed officers' quarters on Post Oak Hill above Mason, standing where the army's stone fort was taken apart by the town that grew up below it.
• Eckert James River Bat Cave Preserve — 14 mi
  A limestone cave on the James River where about four million Mexican free-tailed bats raise their young each summer, kept open to visitors by a family's gift.
• Enchanted Rock State Natural Area — 30 mi
  A dome of pink granite north of Fredericksburg that rises some 385 feet above Sandy Creek, creaks as it cools at night, and has drawn people for thousands of years.

More markers nearby

• Hofmann Dry Goods Company — steps away
• Methodism in Mason County — steps away
• Fort Mason and Camp Llano, C.S.A. — steps away
• Mason National Bank — steps away