Coke R. Stevenson
American politician (1888–1975)
Coke Robert Stevenson (March 20, 1888 – June 28, 1975) was an American politician who served as the 35th governor of Texas from 1941 to 1947. He was the first Texan politician to hold the state's three highest offices (Speaker of the Texas House of Representatives, lieutenant governor, and governor). In 1966, Recorded Texas Historic Landmark marker number 5118, honoring Stevenson, was placed on the Kimble County Courthouse grounds in Junction, Texas.
Early life
Stevenson was born in a log cabin in Mason County, the son of Robert Milton Stevenson and Virginia (Hurley) Stevenson. Although some works indicate that Stevenson was named after former Texas Governor Richard Coke, contemporary news accounts indicate he was named after Methodist Bishop Thomas Coke. Stevenson had three brothers – Bascom, Pierce, and Asbury – and their parents named each of the Stevenson sons after a prominent Methodist bishop. Stevenson's father was a surveyor and school teacher who later opened a store in Junction.
As a teenager, Stevenson went into business hauling freight with a six-horse wagon on a seventy-five mile trip between Junction and Brady, a trip that took a week to complete. On these trips he studied bookkeeping correspondence courses, history and government by the light of his nighttime campfires as part of a plan to begin a business or banking career. When Stevenson learned about the opening of the First State Bank in Junction, he applied for a bookkeeping job but was offered a position as a janitor.
“Coke R. Stevenson” enters the record as american politician (1888–1975). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Coke, Stevenson and American can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“Coke R. Stevenson” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Coke, Stevenson and American provides the most credible route into that argument.
Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 15, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q542045. VIAF identifies the subject as 11226086. The Library of Congress control number is n83166436. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1888, 1975, 1941 and 1947.
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This entry incorporates text from “Coke R. Stevenson” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.