The Woman's Club

The plaque gives the club's founding and its projects. A 1988 club history adds how the work felt. The first year's twenty-nine meetings studied Greece. In 1913 the club created a city park, which it later gave up so the library could be built on the site. In 1917 and 1918, under president Mrs. J. T. Hanway, each member planted and cared for one live oak on College Avenue, and about thirty-nine were reported alive in 1985 and 1988. The club left the state federation in 1974.

What the plaque says

The Woman's Club Founded in October 1895 as the Mutual Improvement Circle, this organization began with twenty members. Initially gathering in individual homes, the club met as a study group to improve members' minds, serve the community, and promote the cause of women's rights. Its program for the first year was a study of Greece. Among the club's early civic projects were the establishment of the city's Carnegie Library in 1903, downtown beautification efforts, and landscaping of the courthouse grounds. Club members planted a row of live oak trees along the College Avenue approach to the Texas A&M University campus. In 1909 the name of the organization was changed to The Woman's Club. Meetings were held in the Carnegie Library building until 1929, when the first clubhouse was built. Due to increases in membership, the club met in a number of different locations before the present facility was constructed in 1972. The white rose serves as the organization's symbol and appears on club publications and awards. The Woman's Club continues to be active in the civic affairs of Bryan and College Station. (1989)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• George H.W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum — 4.5 mi
  The library of the forty-first president on the Texas A&M campus, opened in 1997, where George and Barbara Bush and their daughter Robin are buried in a family plot on the grounds.
• Independence and Old Baylor Park — 24 mi
  A crossroads north of Brenham that was the richest town in Texas when it won Baylor University in 1845, refused the railroad, and lost the college to Waco and Belton in 1886.
• Navasota — 25 mi
  A railroad and cotton town where the La Bahia Road crossed the Navasota River, scarred by an 1865 explosion and yellow fever, and the home ground of the songster Mance Lipscomb.
• Fanthorp Inn State Historic Site — 26 mi
  A cedar-log dogtrot cabin of 1834 on the road through Anderson that grew into a seventeen-room inn and post office for travelers of the Republic, kept by one family until 1976.

More markers nearby

• First Presbyterian Church — steps away
• Site of First Public School in Bryan — 0.6 mi
• First Methodist Church of Bryan — 0.9 mi
• First Baptist Church, Bryan, Texas — 0.9 mi