Campbell "Honeymoon Home"
Longview, Gregg County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Thomas Mitchell Campbell (1856-1923), a native of Rusk, worked in the Gregg County clerk's office in Longview before becoming a lawyer in 1878, the same year he married Fannie Bruner. This small frame cottage served as their first home. Campbell was later a railroad executive before serving two terms as Governor of Texas, 1907-1911. The Campbell's former home was moved here from its original location (across Second Street) in 1982. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1965
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Before he became governor of Texas, Thomas Mitchell Campbell was a young Longview clerk who read law, married, and set up housekeeping with his bride in this modest frame cottage. He went on to a career as a railroad executive before winning two terms in the statehouse, and in 1982 the little starter home was moved a short distance to be preserved.
Why it matters
The humble cottage grounds a future governor's rise in the ordinary domestic beginnings of small-town East Texas.
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Related people
- ยท Thomas Mitchell Campbell
- ยท Fannie Bruner
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
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Longview, TX
Laid out in 1877 just beyond Longview's limits and beside a new railroad subdivision, this burial ground became the resting place for the town's founding generation. Its rows hold a War of 1812 veteran, dozens of Confederate soldiers, victims of the 1894 Dalton Gang bank robbery, and a family lost in the 1900 Galveston hurricane, alongside civic fathers like O.H. Methvin, called the father of Longview. Renamed Greenwood in 1905 when the city grew to enclose it, the cemetery reads almost as a directory of the region's past.
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First Methodist Church of Longview
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This congregation dates to 1845, when a one-room log building served the community as church, school, and town hall, tended by circuit-riding ministers until 1850. Following the paths of trade and travel, the congregation moved to Earpville on the stagecoach road in 1860 and then relocated its building to Longview in 1874 after the railroad arrived. It has served the area for more than a century and a half.
O. H. Methvin, Sr., Founder of Longview
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