The Molloy Hotel

The plaque names George T. Jester among the hotel's owners, and the Handbook of Texas traces his road. Born in Illinois in 1847, he came to Texas in a covered wagon in 1858, worked as a boy on the Corsicana courthouse, joined the Fourth Texas Regiment near the war's end and began banking in 1881. He presided over Corsicana National Bank, entered the legislature in 1890, and served as lieutenant governor from 1894 to 1898. One of his three sons, Beauford, was elected governor in 1946.

What the plaque says

The Molloy Hotel In 1874, three years after the rail line was laid through Corsicana, lawyer Henry Molloy (1829-1913) had a one-story hotel built to accommodate businessmen and other travelers. Molloy added the second story in 1881. Over the years, the building came to be a center of business and social activity and has been owned by a number of the town's leading citizens, including George T. Jester, father of former Texas Governor Beauford H. Jester. The hotel, which closed in 1975, stands as a reminder of Corsicana's early days as a railroad town. (1983)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Petroleum Industry Park — 0.3 mi
  The pipes and drilling tower mark where a city water well struck oil on June 9, 1894, the start of the first Texas field to produce oil and gas in important quantities.
• Blind Lemon Memorial Cemetery — 20 mi
  The Freestone County grave of the Texas blues singer Blind Lemon Jefferson, who recorded for Paramount in Chicago from 1926 and died there in December 1929.
• Ellis County Courthouse — 30 mi
  J. Riely Gordon's courthouse of 1897 in Pecos red sandstone and pink granite, with twenty-one carved stone faces and two cornerstones left by a quarrel over its building.

More markers nearby

• Site of Merchants Opera House — steps away
• Corsicana Newspapers — steps away
• The First National Bank of Corsicana — steps away
• Alexander Beaton — steps away