DUANE
Duane's take
Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Now, before Kyle, Texas was Kyle, Texas, there were two other settlements already putting down roots in that corner of Hays County. The Blanco — or Nance — community, seven miles to the west, and Mountain City, three miles west of where Kyle would eventually stand.
Those folks had already been living, trading, and building lives out there long before anybody drove a railroad spike. Then came 1880. The International and Great Northern Railroad decided to run a line from Austin down to San Antonio, and that changed everything.
Fergus Kyle — the man the town would be named for — and the family of David Moore put together two hundred acres of land for a townsite right along that new line. And with that, Kyle was founded. Now, how do you launch a brand new town?
You hold an auction. In October of 1880, the very first lots were sold — not in a courthouse, not in some grand hall — but beneath a liveoak tree at 204 South Sledge Street. Picture that.
A whole future city going up for bid in the shade of a single tree. The first business to open its doors? A saloon and meat market, owned by a man named Tom Martin.
Because this was Texas, and priorities were priorities. The town grew, as towns do, and by 1895 the voters of Kyle decided to incorporate. But here's the twist — just two years later, those same voters turned right around and discontinued that status.
Kyle, apparently, wasn't ready to be official just yet. It took until 1906 for the town to incorporate again, and this time it stuck. J.
W. Tompkins stepped in as the first mayor. But the chapter of Kyle's story that really deserves a long, slow pause around the campfire?
The 1940s. When Kyle residents went to the polls and elected an all-woman municipal government. The mayor who led that administration won her seat through a write-in campaign.
Her name was Mary Kyle Hartson — born in 1865, and she lived all the way to 1956. And she was the daughter of Fergus Kyle himself. The town named for her father, run by his daughter.
There's a kind of symmetry in that you couldn't write if you tried. Her brother, Edwin Jackson Kyle, born in 1876, carved out his own remarkable path. He became dean of the Texas A&M School of Agriculture, and later served in the administrations of two presidents — Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman — as the ambassador to Guatemala, from 1944 to 1948.
And if you've ever watched a football game at Texas A&M University, you've stood in the shadow of his name — Kyle Football Field bears it to this day. One family. One liveoak auction.
Two hundred donated acres. And a town that, once it finally made up its mind to stick around, left a mark all the way to the halls of the presidency and the plains of College Station.
What the marker says
Two antebellum settlements, the Blanco or Nance community (7 mi. W) and Mountain City (3 mi. W), provided the early population and business for Kyle after the city was founded in 1880. Fergus Kyle, for whom the town was named, and the family of David Moore donated 200 acres of land for a townsite when the International & Great Northern Railroad built a line from Austin to San Antonio. Lots were first sold in October 1880 as an auction held beneath a liveoak at 204 S. sledge Street. The first business was a saloon and meat market owned by Tom Martin. An 1895 election incorporated the town but voters discontinued the status two years later. Kyle was incorporated again in 1906 and J. W. Tompkins served as the first mayor. In the 1940s Kyle residents elected an all-woman municipal government. The mayor, who won using a write-in campaign, was Mary Kyle Hartson (1865-1956), daughter of Fergus Kyle. Her brother Edwin Jackson Kyle (b. 1876) was dean of the Texas A&M School of Agriculture. He later served in the administrations of Presidents Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman as the ambassador to Guatemala (1944-48). Kyle Football Field at Texas A&M University is named in his honor.