William Lane

William Lane was born in 1843, three years before Hunt County existed. The Handbook of Texas says the county was formed in 1846 from Fannin and Nacogdoches counties and named for Memucan Hunt, the first Texas minister to Washington. Settlement began in 1839, and about 350 people lived in the county when it was created. The first Anglo-American settlers met only small bands of Kiowa, who left soon afterward. Lane's birth near what became Wolfe City therefore fell within the first few years of a settlement the plaque places in the Republic of Texas.

What the plaque says

William Lane (1843-1922) First Anglo-American born in Hunt County, then in Republic of Texas. Birthplace: on South Sulphur, near present Wolfe City. Son of John W. Lane, one of commissioners organizing county. During Civil War, served in Confederate army. Later moved to Vansickle community, 4 mi. SW of this spot, where he spent rest of his life. Married first Mary E. Hale. Had 2 children. His second wife was Betty Evans. (1965)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Audie Murphy / American Cotton Museum — 4.4 mi
  A Greenville museum of Hunt County's military heroes, including Audie Murphy, and of cotton, which keeps the engine of what it says was the world's largest inland cotton compress.
• Rockwall County Historical Foundation & Museum — 22 mi
  A small museum in Harry Myers Park that keeps the evidence on Rockwall's rock wall, sandstone dikes that geologists call natural and folk tales call built.
• No. 1 British Flying Training School Museum — 26 mi
  A free museum at Terrell's airport where about 2,200 RAF cadets learned to fly between 1941 and 1945, with logbooks, uniforms, letters and original training aircraft.
• Cooper Lake State Park — 32 mi
  Two units on Jim Chapman Lake, a Corps reservoir proposed in the late 1930s, stalled by a lawsuit until 1984 and dedicated in 1991, with a 10.5-mile equestrian trail and wildlife land around it.

More markers nearby

• Majors Army Airfield — 1.6 mi
• Wesley College Administration Building — 3.3 mi
• Center Point Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) — 3.5 mi
• Wesley United Methodist Church — 3.7 mi