The Gault Homestead

The community the homestead belonged to was named for Capt. Nelson Merrill, who sold the Gaults their second tract. Merrill settled two miles south of McNeil in 1837 and later kept a store and the post office, opened in 1851. By the mid-1880s Merrilltown had a steam gristmill and cotton gin, a general store, a church and a school for its thirty-five people, and about 100 by the mid-1890s. Its post office closed in 1902, and mail went to Round Rock. The school district lasted until 1949. Austin has since annexed the area.

What the plaque says

The Gault Homestead Included as part of a 320-acre land grant awarded to J. P. Whelin in payment for his service to the Republic of Texas Army, this property has had a long and varied history. Soon after he was granted the land, Whelin sold it to Nathaniel C. Raymond, who in turn sold it to John M. Gault two years later. Gault built a log cabin on the Whelin grant in the 1850s, and he and his family established a farm. In 1855 they purchased adjoining land from Captain Nelson Merrill and soon thereafter built a larger home on that tract of land. Gault died about 1865 and was buried in Merrilltown Cemetery. The homestead property remained in his family until 1892, when it was sold to William and Edna Graves. They maintained the Gault homestead as tenant property for a number of years, during which the original cabin was enlarged with a board-and-batten addition. R. C. Cox acquired the property in 1929, and his family lived in the cabin through the following decade. After a succession of owners, the Gault homestead became part of a modern housing development in the 1980s. It remains as a reminder of the Merrilltown community and of the county's early rural heritage. (1990)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Mount Bonnell — 10 mi
  Austin's old lookout over the Colorado, named by an 1838 traveler, picnicked on by George and Libbie Custer, and reached by a 1939 flight of about 100 limestone steps.
• LBJ Presidential Library — 11 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 — 12 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 — 12 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.

More markers nearby

• Waters Park — 2.6 mi
• St. Mary Missionary Baptist Church — 2.9 mi
• Pflugerville — 3.4 mi
• Evangelical Lutheran Church of Dessau — 3.6 mi