Ulysses Cephas

Cephas learned smithing from his father and used it on his own house and shop, where local papers called him the village blacksmith. In 1933 he bought his rented shop. He made custom pieces for neighbors, including a medical device that helped a local woman walk after a car accident. Local history adds that horseshoe prints let him identify a man in a Klan attack on his neighbors. He died owning his home and rental property, with $10,000 saved for his heirs. The city bought the house in 2003 and began restoring it in 2012.

What the plaque says

Ulysses Cephas (1884-1952) The son of former slaves Joe and Elizabeth Cephas, Ulysses Cephas was born in San Marcos. He was trained at an early age to carry on the blacksmithing trade of his father. Known as "Boots" to his friends and family, Cephas eventually owned his own blacksmith shop and was known throughout the county for his skills in shoeing horses and creating superior wagons and farming implements. a respected community leader, he was an active member of the First Missionary Baptist Church and organizer of the San Marcos Independent Band. (1989)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Spring Lake and the Meadows Center — 1.2 mi
  The headsprings of the San Marcos River, among the longest-inhabited places in North America, once an amusement park with a swimming pig and now seen from glass-bottom boats.
• Gruene Historic District — 14 mi
  A cotton town on the Guadalupe that the boll weevil emptied, rescued in the 1970s by a kayaking architecture student, with a dance hall that says it has never closed.
• Lockhart Courthouse Square — 16 mi
  A cotton-era courthouse town named the Barbecue Capital of Texas, built near the 1840 Plum Creek fight that followed the killing of Comanche leaders at peace talks.
• Sophienburg Museum and Archives — 17 mi
  The hilltop where Prince Carl of Solms-Braunfels raised the Adelsverein's headquarters in 1845, now the museum and archive of the German colony that became New Braunfels.

More markers nearby

• Eddie Durham — steps away
• Wesley Chapel A. M. E. Church — steps away
• The Courthouses of Hays County — 0.2 mi
• Founding of the First Methodist Church — 0.3 mi