Fergus Kyle died May 19, 1906.
On this date in 1906, Fergus Kyle, the man for whom Kyle, Texas, is named, died.
Kyle was born Sept. 6, 1834 in Mississippi. His family moved to Texas in 1844 and settled in Hays County about 1850.
He went to school in Austin, and married Anna Elizabeth Moore in 1860. They had nine children. His son Edwin Jackson Kyle would become dean of Texas A&M and would have Kyle Field named after him.
He enlisted as a private during the Civil War, and was promoted to captain after the battle of Shiloh. He later became an aide to Gen. Benjamin F. Cheatham.
After the war, he returned to Hays and began farming. He was elected to the state House of Representatives in 1870 as a Democrat.
In 1880, the town of Kyle was named in his honor after he, his wife and her family deeded the land for a townsite.
Kyle served as the Texas Senate sergeant-at-arms from 1881 to 1884. He was reelected to the state House in 1900.
According to The Handbook of Texas Online: “He returned to the House in 1901 and cosponsored the Alamo purchase bill of 1905, which saved the Texas shrine. He was, in his third term, the oldest member of the legislature when he died on May 19, 1906. Kyle, a Baptist, was buried in the Kyle cemetery.”
Source: The Handbook of Texas Online, Texas State Historical Association.