1906 Reunion of Hood's Texas Brigade
Somerville, Burleson County, Texas
Marker Inscription
In 1906 Somerville hosted the annual reunion of the Hood's Texas Brigade Association, a group established in 1872 for veterans of the celebrated Confederate unit. For two days, June 27-28, 74 veterans were honored with a celebration which included speeches, a baseball game, and a grand ball. The local events were planned under the direction of the association's president R.A. Brantley, Sr., and his daughter Mrs. Norton B. Wellborn, both of Somerville. Part of a tradition which ended in 1934, the reunion reflected the area's respect for the former Civil War soldiers. (1981)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Hood's Texas Brigade was among the most celebrated Confederate commands, and after the Civil War its survivors kept a bond that outlasted the fighting. In June 1906 the little town of Somerville hosted the brigade association's annual reunion, honoring 74 aging veterans with speeches, a baseball game, and a grand ball across two summer days. Organized locally by R. A. Brantley, Sr. and his daughter, it was one link in a chain of reunions that continued until 1934.
Why it matters
These reunions show how communities across the South wove Civil War memory into civic life for generations, blending genuine mourning and fellowship with the shaping of Lost Cause tradition.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
By the summer of 1906, the Civil War was more than forty years in the past, and the young men who had marched off in the early 1860s had grown old. Across the South, communities were holding reunions, raising monuments and staging public ceremonies for the veterans who were still alive. A new century had arrived, with railroads, telephones and electric lights, and many people felt the war generation slipping away.
Texas took a full part in this. Its veterans' organizations met every year, and towns competed for the honor of hosting them. For a place the size of Somerville in Burleson County, hosting a reunion meant weeks of planning, a flood of visitors and the kind of civic pride usually saved for the Fourth of July.
These gatherings did more than one thing at once. They were real occasions of fellowship and grief for men who had shared hardship, and for the families who had lost fathers and brothers. They were also part of a wider movement, often called the Lost Cause, that recast the Confederacy in a heroic light and passed over slavery, the issue at the center of secession. Understanding a reunion like this one means holding both of those truths together.
People & events
Hood's Texas Brigade was one of the best-known units in the Confederate army. It took its name from John Bell Hood, an early commander, and fought in the Eastern Theater with Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia, far from Texas. It became famous for hard fighting and for its heavy losses in some of the war's bloodiest battles. Few of the men who enlisted came home.
The survivors formed the Hood's Texas Brigade Association in 1872, and for decades it met every year. In 1906 it was Somerville's turn. On June 27 and 28 the town honored 74 veterans with two days of speeches, a baseball game and a grand ball. You can picture the scene: old soldiers in their best clothes, crowds under the June sun, young people dancing late into the evening while their grandfathers traded memories.
The local arrangements were run by the association's president, R. A. Brantley, Sr., together with his daughter, Mrs. Norton B. Wellborn, both of Somerville. It was a family effort that brought the whole town into the work. The reunions went on for years afterward, until the tradition ended in 1934, when very few of the brigade's men could still have been living.
Its place in the American story
The Somerville reunion was one small part of a much larger American story: how the country remembered its most divisive war. In the decades around 1900, reunions, monuments and memorial days shaped how millions of people understood the Civil War, and in the South that memory was often built around honoring Confederate soldiers.
That memory carried real consequences. Remembrance that celebrated the soldiers' courage while leaving out slavery helped support the political order of the Jim Crow era. Historians today study events like this one as windows into the way communities built their identity, and into what they chose to remember and what they left unsaid.
The reunion also shows something human and lasting: the bond between people who have survived something terrible together. That bond held for more than sixty years after the war began, and the end of the tradition in 1934 marks the quiet passing of a generation.
If you visit
When you stop at this marker in Somerville, imagine a small Texas town at its busiest, full of visitors, bunting, music and speeches for two days in late June. Today it is a quiet place, and that quiet makes it easier to picture how big the event must have seemed to the people who lived here.
This stop pairs well with other Civil War and Reconstruction markers in Central and East Texas. Visited together, they show both the war and how Texans chose to remember it. It is a good place to talk with children about why people hold reunions, and about how the stories a community tells about its past can be both heartfelt and incomplete.
Take a moment with the marker's date, 1981. It is a reminder that remembering is layered: a 1906 celebration of an 1860s war, marked again by a later generation. Each layer tells you something about the people who put it there.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Related people
- · R. A. Brantley, Sr.
- · Mrs. Norton B. Wellborn
Related events
- · Hood's Texas Brigade reunion
Themes & tags
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