GEORGE WASHINGTON MALONE / MALONE AVENUE

When A. E. Lane added 20 more blocks of land to the town of Manor in 1912, three new east/west streets were created. Two of them, Lane Avenue and Murray Avenue still exist to this day. The third street, Malone Avenue, which was only one block long, is no longer on Manor maps.

Plat map of the Lane Addition to the town of Manor
Travis County Plat Records 1-2, page 223

While there may not be any way to prove it once and for all time, it is believed that Malone Avenue was named named after George Washington Malone, a well-known Manor area farmer and rancher who owned many acres of land near Manor.

G. W Malone was born in Orange County, North Carolina on October 6, 1830. His family moved to Maury County, Tennessee when he was three years old where his father was a farmer and the Postmaster of Ashwood, TN.

At the age of fifteen he worked in a drug store for approximately one year, after which he moved to Travis County, Texas, arriving in March, 1852. Settling in Webberville, he found a job as a clerk in a couple of different stores over the next few years. He then moved to Corpus Christi where he again was employed as a store clerk for one more year.

Upon deciding that he would rather work for himself than someone else, he returned to Travis County and on September 17, 1855 he married the widow of James Manor’s younger brother David, Susan E. Manor, who was also a former resident of Tennessee.

For three years he leased land on Gilleland Creek, after which he purchased 400 plus acres of good farm land located about twelve miles east of Austin and three miles south of Manor. 150 acres of land was cultivated for growing crops but he also raised much livestock and was said to have owned and operated a cotton gin. Most of the land owned by G.W. and Susan Malone was located in the William Sanders, James Manning and Oliver Buckman surveys in Travis County, specifically in the area where these three surveys meet. 

According to Travis County Deed Records 34, page 59, dated November 26, 1878, their homestead was said to be in the northern part of the Oliver Buckman survey, about 3 miles from the city of Manor. 

From an early age, G.W. was active in fraternal societies, becoming a Grand Master of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows before he was twenty years old. Just after his twenty-first birthday he was made a Master Mason while still in Tennessee. He was a charter member of Parsons Masonic Lodge 222 in Manor and later was a member of Manor Chapter, No. 127. He was a member of the Ben Hur Temple Mystic Shrine in Austin as well as the Protestant Episcopal Church.

Articles printed in August and September of 1872 in The Democratic Statesman newspaper from Austin listed G.W. Malone as one of 14 men responsible for arrangements of a gathering of distinguished speakers and an old-fashioned country dinner to be held near Manor on September 14th. 

The Malones had five children, three of which survived to adulthood.

His biography from The Lone Star State, History of Texas, Together with a Biographical History of Milam, Williamson, Bastrop, Travis, Lee and Burleson Counties printed in 1893 said this about G.W. Malone;

“While now just in the virile prime of life he has already provided a competence to sustain him in his declining years, and by his many years of honorable and upright dealings he has won the confidence and esteem of all who know him. He is generous, charitable and public-spirited, and has ever been among the foremost to contribute of his means and to lend his influence to every laudable enterprise tending to the conservation of the best interests of the community in which he lives. He is a man of broad intelligence and much business and executive ability.”

Upon the death of A.E. Lane on January 14, 1914, ownership of the remaining unsold lots and blocks of the Lane Addition passed to his wife and children. The third-born child, David Addison Lane, had married Martha Louise Callaway, who went by “Mattie”, on April 27, 1892. D. A. Lane died September 12, 1944, at which time ownership of his portion of the Lane Addition passed to his widow, Mattie.

At a meeting of the Travis County Commissioners Court on July 31, 1946, a small triangular-shaped portion of Mattie C. Lane’s property was taken under the authority of the Eminent Domain Law of the State of Texas. The property taken was judged to be valued at $100 and Mattie was paid that amount. According to the Commissioners Court records, the land, which was a small part of lots 6, 7, 8 and 9 in Block 5 of the Lane Addition, was “lying within the limits of the proposed right-of-way for relocating State Highway No. 20”. Highway 20, at that time ran through the middle of Manor on Parsons Street, as it still does today.

It is unknown whether or not work was ever started on relocating Highway No. 20, but starting in 1951 State Highway 290 from Austin to Paige was rerouted to go through Manor instead of Bastrop. With the building of Highway 290, Malone Avenue ceased to exist. It is buried beneath the portion of 290 that runs on the north side of the block between Cafe 290 and Texas Traditional Bar-B-Q, right in front of Leal's Tire shop and Manor Lube and State Inspection.

George Washington Malone died March 5, 1898 at his home in Hyde Park in Austin. Having previously sold his Manor area property, he left only lots 12 thru 16 in Hyde Park, now designated as his homestead, to his widow, Susan, who survived him by a few years. His namesake street, Malone Avenue, continued to exist until 1946.