William Henry and Lydia Ann English Guyler

The plaque credits Lydia Guyler with nursing the sick in 1867, the deadliest yellow fever season in Texas history. Epidemics had come almost yearly since 1836, but that summer, with Texas still under Union control, about 1,000 of Galveston's 22,000 people died, and 492 of roughly 6,000 in Houston, Dick Dowling of Sabine Pass among them. No one yet knew that a mosquito carried the virus. Walter Reed confirmed it in 1900. In the 1870s the Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe, the railroad the Guylers later sold land to, carried the fever's risk inland.

What the plaque says

William Henry and Lydia Ann English Guyler Kentucky natives William Henry Guyler (1823-1897) and Lydia Ann English (1826-1920) were married in 1845 and journeyed to Texas in 1859. They purchased a homestead on the Milburn and Davis land grant in Austin County. William Guyler erected a log cabin nearby in which they lived, and built a trading post, sawmill and cotton gin. The businesses served people in a 20-mile radius. During the Civil War William Guyler served in the Confederate Army with General John Sayles' company in the 23rd Brigade. Lydia Guyler aided the soldiers at home and donated supplies wherever most needed. During the yellow fever epidemic of 1867, Lydia Guyler helped nurse those stricken with the disease. In 1873 William Guyler became the first postmaster of the Bovine Bend community. In 1875-76, when the Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe Railway built its line through the area, the Guylers sold 100 acres of land for $10 for the right-of-way and for the establishment of the town of Wallis. The longest street in Wallis is named in honor of the Guylers to mark their contribution to the community in which they lived. (1997)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• San Felipe de Austin State Historic Site — 11 mi
  Stephen F. Austin's colonial capital on a Brazos bluff, the town of the Consultation and the first Texas newspapers, burned by its own garrison in the Runaway Scrape of 1836.
• Attwater Prairie Chicken National Wildlife Refuge — 13 mi
  Ten thousand acres of native coastal prairie northeast of Eagle Lake, kept for a critically endangered grouse, many of whose birds are hatched in captivity and released here.
• Brazos Bend State Park — 33 mi
  Oak and pecan bottomland, lakes and alligators on the Brazos River 45 miles from downtown Houston, with the museum's George Observatory in the woods.

More markers nearby

• St. Paul Lutheran Church — 0.7 mi
• Wallis Methodist Church — 1.0 mi
• Wallis State Bank — 1.1 mi
• Guardian Angel Catholic Church — 1.5 mi