FOUNDER -- of the City of Lancaster TX, Abram Bledsoe, Lancaster TX
N 32° 35.530 W 096° 45.357
14S E 710611 N 3608298
Abram Bledsoe founded the town of Lancaster TX in 1852
Waymark Code: WMTMGD
Location: Texas, United States
Date Posted: 12/11/2016
Views: 4
Abram Bledsoe is recognized on a state historic marker as the founder of the town of Lancaster, now a busy suburb south of Dallas.
The marker reads as follows:
"TOWN OF LANCASTER
Founded by A. Bledsoe (1801 - 1882), from Kentucky, joined by his son-in-law, Roderick A. Rawlins (1833 - 1910), and Mrs. Mildred Parks Rawlins (1789 - 1875). The elder Rawlins family came to this locality in 1844. Bledsoe, later to become Texas State Comptroller, settled here in 1846. With the Rawlins' cooperation, he established this town about 1852, patterning and naming it after the Kentucky town founded by his grandfather. Stores, a school, churches, a grist mill, tannery, cotton gin, and carding mill soon were built in or near the 1-square-mile townsite. During the Civil War (1860s), a Confederate pistol factory was operated here. After 1876, a town well on the Square provided water for citizens and visitors. The first railroad arrived in 1888, another in 1890. Randolph College, an enterprise of one of the Texas Christian University founders, Randolph Clark, operated here 1898 - 1900. Other schools used the college plant until it burned in 1912. Fires also destroyed some sections of this Square in 1877, 1889, and 1918. During its first century, Lancaster was a farmers' market town -- its fortunes fluctuating with yields and prices of cotton. Since 1950, a broader economy prevails, and the population has increased.
Marker Donor: Lancaster Historical Society"
FIRST - Classification Variable: Item or Event
Date of FIRST: 03/15/1852
More Information - Web URL: [Web Link]
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