Tyler in the 1850s11 cards: 5 firsts, 1 claimed first and 5 beginnings
- Tyler’s oldest recorded school: four boys, west of townA school for boys on Oakwood Street, closed before the Civil War.
- Tyler is incorporatedIncorporated, and the county seat of Smith County.
- A female seminary opens, later Charnwood InstituteDated 1851 by the city’s survey and 1865 by the Handbook.
- The Tyler Telegraph, the county’s first newspaperDavid Clopton began publishing the Tyler Telegraph, a weekly and the first newspaper in Smith County, in 1851.
- The 1852 courthouse, whose bricks went into later onesGone now; its bricks went into the 1908 and 1955 courthouses.
- The Methodists’ Sunday school, called “the first”In the home of Reverend Wells, 1852.
- Oakwood Cemetery’s oldest marked graveFour-year-old P. M. Scott, who died in 1852.
- Tyler University opens as a Baptist academyIts women’s department became Eastern Texas Female College.
- The first try at a railroad: a charter, and no trackThe Dallas and Tyler Railroad’s charter expired unbuilt.
- The first brick buildings in Smith CountyFive stores on the square, built by Alfred W. Ferguson.
- The first known record of a Disciples of Christ churchAn 1859 deed for a red brick sanctuary.