The Rev. Thomas Wadlington Cotten

Runnels County's first courthouse stood in the seat for thirty-eight days. The Handbook of Texas says commissioners met at Walthall in 1880 to organize the county, and Cotten offered his stone house as a temporary courthouse. Walthall was county seat from March 10 to April 17, 1880, until a new site on Elm Creek was chosen. The same entry says the Walthall Baptist Church was organized in 1879 with Cotten as pastor. The marker stands on private land, and nothing here gives a route to it.

What the plaque says

The Rev. Thomas Wadlington Cotten A native of Illinois and elder in the Primitive Baptist Church, the Rev. Thomas W. Cotten moved here from Grayson County in 1877. He helped organize Runnels County's first church, the Colorado Baptist Church, in 1878 and served as first pastor. When Runnels County was organized in 1880, his stone house was the temporary courthouse. He married Mrs. Catharine Shaw (McComb) Hobson (1816-86). Six of their nine children reached adulthood. (1976)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Carnegie Library of Ballinger — 4.7 mi
  A 1909 limestone library with an Ionic portico in a railroad town the Santa Fe created in 1886, one of the few Texas Carnegie libraries still working in its original building.
• Z. I. Hale Museum and Rock Hotel — 19 mi
  A free museum in a Winters optometrist's office, a 1909 railroad hotel and a 1927 implement dealership, with Rogers Hornsby's hometown memorabilia and a 1912 horse-drawn cotton picker.
• Fort Chadbourne — 32 mi
  An 1852 infantry post and Butterfield stage station on a Coke County ranch, its fallen stone buildings rebuilt since 1999 by the descendant of the family that has ranched the land since 1877.

More markers nearby

• Walthall Cemetery — steps away
• San Clemente Mission — 4.0 mi
• Colorado River Ferry Crossing — 4.0 mi
• Site of Pickettville — 4.3 mi