DeBerry
DeBerry, Panola County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Site of 1850 sawmill and grist mill. Settled mostly by cotton planters. Center for markets and gins. Oil development after 1900. Named for Col. Alfred W. DeBerry (1829-1903), 28th Texas cavalry, dismounted, Confederate army. In 1863-65 legislature, helped pass laws to give confederacy men, revenue and supplies, support soldiers' families and defend Texas frontiers. In 1874-76 was Secretary of State under Gov. Richard Coke, who put Texas government into the hands of the people after nine years of federal rule. (1965)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Settled around an 1850 sawmill and grist mill, this East Texas cotton community became a market and ginning center before oil arrived after 1900. It took its name from Col. Alfred W. DeBerry, a Confederate cavalry officer who served in the wartime Texas legislature and later, as secretary of state under Governor Richard Coke, helped return state government to local control after Reconstruction.
Why it matters
DeBerry's story compresses a whole era of East Texas history—frontier milling, the cotton economy, Confederate service, and the fierce political struggle to end Reconstruction rule.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Alfred W. DeBerry
- · Richard Coke
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Site of The Confederate Hat Factory in Marshall, C.S.A.
Marshall, TX
With Texas nearly devoid of factories when it joined the Confederacy in 1861, Marshall became a hub of wartime manufacturing and, by 1863, headquarters for Confederate operations west of the Mississippi. In the basement of a dwelling here, some forty workers blocked and finished high-quality fur-felt military hats and stitched blankets to outfit Texas soldiers. The site later passed through generations of the Edmund Key family before becoming a memorial park.
Marshall
Marshall, TX
Founded in 1839 and named for U.S. Chief Justice John Marshall, this East Texas town became a strategic hub during the Civil War, housing supply, ordnance, medical, telegraph, and military headquarters. When Federal forces overran Missouri, that state's Confederate government relocated here, making Marshall the wartime capital-in-exile of Missouri. Rail lines and trade cemented its role as a regional center long after the war.
Marshall Powder Mill
Marshall, TX
When Vicksburg fell to Union forces in 1863, the Confederacy's Trans-Mississippi Department was cut off from the arsenals of Richmond and had to make its own war materiel. Late that summer the ordnance works from Arkadelphia, Arkansas, were relocated to Marshall, where crews built shops, a magazine, and a powder mill that ran at full tilt in 1864. After the surrender, occupying Federal troops began dismantling the machinery when an explosion killed three soldiers and wounded two more.
Bell-Fountain Cemetery
DeBerry, TX
This East Texas farming community grew up around the early Kinlock post office, its settlers sharing a five-acre burial ground deeded to the Bell-Fountain Baptist Church, founded before the Civil War. The earliest marked grave, a child who died in 1850, and the several Confederate veterans laid to rest here mark the sweep of pioneer life through the war years. After the church burned in 1880 and the congregation dispersed, descendants preserved the site, fencing the plot and raising a tabernacle where the church once stood.