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Site of Hockaday Homestead |
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Pecan Gap,
TX,
USA
Latitude & Longitude:
33° 26' 14.13402",
-95° 52' 8.65779999996"
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Texas State
Historical Marker |
After a noted career as an educator and founder of Giles Academy (4 mi. E), Virginia-born Thomas Hart Benton Hockaday (1835-1918) bought over 280 acres in this area in 1870. He farmed the land and built and operated a cotton gin. He later sold much of the property but maintained an 80-acre homestead on this site for his wife Maria and their seven children. Following Maria's death in 1881, he married Misouri Bird in 1892. Hockaday sold his property to Laurence Pickard in 1916 and moved to Ladonia (4.5 mi. W) where he spent the remaining two years of his life. Pickard moved the Hockaday house in 1921 and divided it into rent houses for the farm's employees. Although the house itself is gone, the existing barn was constructed from Hockaday's cotton gin. T. H. B. Hockaday's youngest child, Ela (1875-1913), followed her father's footsteps into education. In 1913, at the peak of a teaching career that began at age eighteen, she established the Hockaday School in Dallas. In the 33 years she was with the school, Hockaday earned national recognition as an excellent college preparatory school for girls. Ela Hockaday was instrumental in the founding of the Hockaday Alumnae Association which continues to carry on the Hockaday tradition. (1981, 1998)
This page last updated: 7/15/2008 |
Site of Hockaday Homestead Historical Marker Location Map, Pecan Gap, Texas
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