Copperas Cove Remembers Historian Linda Ledger, Keeper of City's Past

The stone structure at Ogletree Gap Park, a post office and stagecoach stop built in 1878 that gave Copperas Cove its name, carries a historical marker that exists because Linda Ledger went looking for it. Ledger, who died February 13 at age 81, was honored at a celebration of life March 21, drawing family, friends and fellow residents who knew her as the city's most tenacious keeper of local memory.

Ledger's research into the Ogletree Gap Post Office produced the documentation that secured its designation as Copperas Cove's first-ever historical marker, a milestone she regularly recounted at community events in her role as a Coryell County Historical Commission member. The 1878 stone building, which served successively as a post office, stagecoach stop, ranching headquarters and home before passing into city hands in 1974, stands today at Ogletree Gap Park as a living artifact of her determination to fix the city's founding story in the public record.

Born March 10, 1944, in Conway, South Carolina, to Harold and Ethel Lee Johnson, Ledger arrived in Copperas Cove through the route familiar to many Central Texas families: military life. She graduated from Copperas Cove High School with the Class of 1962, then headed back to South Carolina to study journalism at the University of South Carolina. Her high school sweetheart, Les Ledger, persuaded her to return. They married in 1965, settled in Copperas Cove and ran Ledger Furniture in downtown together. She later completed degree work at Southwest Texas State University, now Texas State University.

She put the journalism training to sustained use, authoring newspaper articles about Copperas Cove, speaking at the city's annual birthday celebrations and the Ogletree Gap Heritage Festival, and tracing the city's history from its 1870s origins forward for residents, school groups and civic organizations.

Her public service extended well beyond historical work. Ledger served on the Copperas Cove Independent School District Board of Trustees for 18 years, founded the Coryell County Child Welfare Board and served as its first president, and was recognized by President George H.W. Bush as a Points of Light awardee. The Copperas Cove Education Foundation later inducted her and Les into its Hall of Honor.

The family is directing memorial donations to the Copperas Cove Education Foundation at PO Box 943, Copperas Cove, TX 76522, with "Linda Ledger Memorial Donation" noted on the envelope. Her papers, photographs and research files represent a significant potential addition to the Coryell Museum & Historical Center, the county's primary public repository for historical materials. What she spent more than six decades assembling, record by record, now needs a permanent home in the community she chose to stay in.