Cooke County, C.S.A./2nd Frontier Regiment
Gainesville, Cooke County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Military, defense center in Civil War. Cooke voted 231 to 137 anti-secession, yet nine military units served Confederacy from here. In constant danger of Federal or Indian attack. Col. Wm. C. Young of Cooke, with 1,000 men took Indian Territory forts from Federals April-May 1861. Commissioners set up regular patrols. Forted a home as refuge for dependents. Gave $4,000 for munitions and wool cards to make cloth. Cotton gin, grist mill, gunsmiths, blacksmiths made war goods. C.S.A. was furnished epsom salts from Indian creek. Corn, beef, pork, wheat, other produce fed the military, home front. County swapped 25 steers for salt for dependent families. People worked hard, sacrificed much, protected homes of fighting men of Confederacy. (Back of Cooke County, C.S.A.) Organized Oct. 1863 with Gainesville as headquarters, the Second Frontier Regiment, Texas Cavalry C.S.A. guarded counties along Red River, to keep down outlaws, Indians, deserters. Col. James Bourland (1803-1868) was appointed Commander and it became known as "Bourland's Border Regiment." Union invasion from north of Red River was constantly threatened. These mounted troops patrolled, maintained posts along river and in Indian Territory. Confederate Seminole troops served with the unit. Famous Confederate Indian Gen. Stand Watie and his Cherokee Brigade shared duty along perilous border. Bourland also worked with Frontier Regiment, state troops, that maintained line posts 100 mi. west, a day's horseback ride apart, from Red to Rio Grande rivers, and with a state militia line 30 mi. to the west. Erected by The State of Texas 1963.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Though Cooke County voted against secession, it became a Confederate military hub, raising nine units and living under constant threat of Federal or Indian attack along the Red River frontier. Colonel William C. Young led men to seize Indian Territory forts in 1861, and residents forted homes, made cloth and munitions, and fed the war effort with cattle, grain, and salt. Organized in 1863, the Second Frontier Regiment—"Bourland's Border Regiment" under Col. James Bourland—patrolled the border alongside Confederate Cherokee and Seminole troops and Gen. Stand Watie's brigade.
Why it matters
It reveals the divided loyalties and multi-front frontier warfare of the Civil War in North Texas, where Confederate, Union, Native, and outlaw threats overlapped along the Red River.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Col. William C. Young
- · Col. James Bourland
- · Gen. Stand Watie
Related events
- · American Civil War
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Gainesville
Gainesville, TX
Founded in 1850 and named for General Edmund P. Gaines, whose troops had backed the young Republic of Texas in 1836, Gainesville sat on the edge of the frontier in Cooke County. It served as a Confederate military supply headquarters during the Civil War and long stood as a bulwark against raids, while growing into a hub of agriculture, industry, and oil — and home to the famed Gainesville Community Circus.
Forester Ranch
Sanger, TX
William S. Forester drove his family from Tennessee to the Denton County frontier in the early 1850s and carved out a ranch on open range still contested with Native peoples, a danger that cost his teenage son Sol his life while herding cattle. His son Lock, a Confederate veteran, expanded the spread past 6,000 acres and made its "Two I Jinglebob" brand well known, before a third generation carried the ranch into the twentieth century. For over a century the Forester Ranch shaped the cattle country of North Texas.
Perryman Cemetery
Forestburg, TX
The oldest marked grave in this Montague County burial ground belongs to an infant who died in 1862, and its early plots read like a chronicle of frontier hardship: a well-digger killed in an 1863 Indian raid, and two former Confederate soldiers who had been captured at Lookout Mountain. In 1883 Levi Perryman — himself a Confederate veteran, Indian fighter, and sheriff — bought the site and deeded it to the county. Still in use, the cemetery keeps the memory of the district's pioneers.
W. T. G. Weaver
Gainesville, TX
William Thomas Green Weaver came to Texas as a boy in 1840, taught school, studied law, and by 1860 was district attorney for the 20th Judicial District. After Confederate service he resumed practice, and as a delegate to the 1875 Constitutional Convention he argued for a woman's right to vote — decades ahead of his time. He was also a published romantic poet read across the state.