Historical Marker
Zada Jane Sanders Kelly
Groesbeck, Limestone County · Texas
Erected 1969
The plaque places Kelly as federation treasurer while the state clubhouse rose in Austin but gives no year. The Handbook of Texas says the cornerstone of the permanent headquarters was laid in 1932 and that the two-story red brick Southern Colonial building cost $157,000. For the previous ten years the federation's headquarters had been the clubhouse of the Fort Worth Woman's Club. By 1901 the state's 132 member clubs were grouped into five districts, and membership may have peaked in 1941 at 60,000 women in 1,200 clubs. Which years Kelly served is not stated.
What the plaque says
Zada Jane Sanders Kelly Daughter of local pioneer, Mr. and Mrs. J. Cull Sanders, and graduate of Kidd-Key College. Married C. D. Kelly in 1910. A Groesback clubwoman; served as treasurer, Texas Federation of Women's Clubs, when state headquarters were being built in Austin. Recognized nationally, she was awarded a certificate of honor in 1964 by the General Federation of Women's Clubs. Member of Limestone County Historical Survey Committee. Recorded 1969
Where it stands
31.54785, -96.55001 · Directions
Worth the stop nearby
- Old Fort Parker — 1.1 miA rebuilt 1830s family stockade near the Navasota River, where a May 1836 attack killed men of the Parker settlement and took five captives, among them nine-year-old Cynthia Ann Parker.
- Confederate Reunion Grounds State Historic Site — 5.9 miWhere Limestone County Confederate veterans gathered each summer from 1888, later a water supplier in the Mexia oil boom, now a Texas Historical Commission site on the Navasota River.
- Blind Lemon Memorial Cemetery — 18 miThe Freestone County grave of the Texas blues singer Blind Lemon Jefferson, who recorded for Paramount in Chicago from 1926 and died there in December 1929.