The cabinet, shelf by shelfThe same cards, sorted by subject
Town and land
The founding of Tyler and its square, its neighborhoods and historic districts, and its water, light, gas and parks.
- Tyler is authorized as a county seat
- Commissioners lay out the town around a square
- Tyler is incorporated
- Gas lamps light the square
- Voters approve a water plant on Victory Lake
- Patterson’s 5 Acre, a subdivision for Black buyers
- Charnwood becomes Tyler’s first National Register historic district
Civic and government
The county and its courthouses, the courts, City Hall, the police, the fire department, the city’s plans and the wartime camps.
- The county’s first court session meets in a log cabin
- Camp Ford becomes a prison camp
- Smith County’s fourth jail goes up
- Horace Chilton, Texas’ first native-born U.S. senator
- Smith County builds a three-story courthouse
- The Woman’s Building is completed
- City Hall, the first building to hold all the city’s offices
Rails and roads
The railroads and their shops, the brick streets, the first paved roads, a streetcar, a bus terminal and the airport.
- The first try at a railroad: a charter, and no track
- The Tyler Tap Railroad is chartered
- The first railroad reaches Tyler
- The Governor Hubbard brings in the Tyler Tap’s first train
- The railroad puts its shops and hospital in Tyler
- The Cotton Belt, called the first Southwest railroad to burn oil
- The Blackstone Building holds Tyler’s first union bus terminal
Roses and gardens
Rose fields and nurseries, azaleas, the rose festival and its queens, and the municipal rose garden.
- The first recorded sale of rose plants near Tyler
- The first train carload of rose bushes ships
- Maurice Shamburger plants the first azaleas along Lindsey Lane
- Margaret Copeland is crowned the first Rose Queen
- The first rose festival opens in Tyler
- Live rose bushes fill the Rose Show for the first time
- The Tyler Municipal Rose Garden officially opens
Schools and colleges
Schools, colleges and libraries, from a school for four boys to the court cases over who could attend.
- Tyler’s oldest recorded school: four boys, west of town
- A female seminary opens, later Charnwood Institute
- Tyler University opens as a Baptist academy
- The first school for Black children in the Tyler area
- The Carnegie Library, Tyler’s first public library building
- A Baptist academy opens, later Butler College
- Tyler Barber College, called the country’s first for African Americans
Health and medicine
Hospitals, a sanatorium, a laboratory and a medical school.
- The Cotton Belt’s hospital for railroad workers
- The city runs a public hospital
- Dr. Archie S. Senate moves his practice to East Erwin
- Mother Frances Hospital opens a day early
- Camp Fannin becomes a tuberculosis sanatorium
- Andrew Melontree Sr., a first in the hospital laboratories
- The chest hospital joins the University of Texas System
- The UT Tyler School of Medicine seats its first class
Churches and faith
Congregations, churches and synagogues, and the cemeteries beside them.
- Tyler gets its first post office
- Marvin Methodist, called the first church in Smith County
- First Baptist Church of Tyler is organized
- The Methodists’ Sunday school, called “the first”
- Oakwood Cemetery’s oldest marked grave
- The first known record of a Disciples of Christ church
- St. James CME, the oldest surviving Black church building in Tyler
Black Tyler
Schools, churches, businesses and public offices of Tyler’s African American community, and the segregation they were built against.
- The first school for Black children in the Tyler area
- St. James CME Church is organized
- Second Colored Baptist Church, today’s True Vine, is founded
- St. James CME, the oldest surviving Black church building in Tyler
- Patterson’s 5 Acre, a subdivision for Black buyers
- A Baptist academy opens, later Butler College
- Tyler Barber College, called the country’s first for African Americans
Business and work
Banks, stores, a grocery and a foundry, an oil well, a skyscraper and a shopping center.
- The first brick buildings in Smith County
- Murphey the Jeweler opens at Ferguson and Broadway
- Bonner and Williams, Tyler’s first bank
- Tyler’s first ice factory, as the city’s survey tells it
- People’s Bank raises a 15-story tower
- Bergfeld Center, called Tyler’s first suburban shopping center
- Stanley’s neon sign, called the first in Tyler to get a marker
Media, stage and fair
Newspapers, radio and television, theaters and an opera house, the fair, and the ball clubs.
- The Tyler Telegraph, the county’s first newspaper
- Tyler’s first fair, as the city’s survey dates it
- The Grande Opera House opens
- Moving pictures are shown in Tyler for the first time
- Sarah Bernhardt plays the Grand Opera House
- The East Texas Fair Association is founded
- The Tyler Elbertas, a minor league team named for a peach