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.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
DeBerry sits in Panola County, in the far eastern part of Texas near the Louisiana line. In 1850 this was the cotton frontier. Planters from older Southern states were moving into East Texas to clear land for cotton, and the economy they built depended heavily on enslaved labor.
A sawmill and grist mill were often the first things that made a place a real community. The sawmill turned the forests into lumber for houses and barns. The grist mill ground local corn and grain into meal. Around them grew the stores, gins and markets that served the planters and farmers of the surrounding countryside.
The decades that followed brought upheaval. Texas left the Union in 1861 and joined the Confederacy. After the war came Reconstruction, a period of bitter conflict over who would govern the state and what freedom would mean for the formerly enslaved. Later, in the twentieth century, oil development opened a new chapter in the local economy.
People & events
The community takes its name from Alfred W. DeBerry, who was born in 1829 and died in 1903. During the Civil War he served as a colonel with the 28th Texas Cavalry, a regiment that fought dismounted, meaning its horsemen served on foot as infantry. That happened to a number of Texas cavalry units during the war.
DeBerry also served in the Texas Legislature from 1863 to 1865, during the war's last and hardest years. According to the marker, he helped pass laws that supplied the Confederacy with men, money and supplies, supported soldiers' families and defended the Texas frontier. These were the pressing issues of a state straining under war.
From 1874 to 1876 he was Texas Secretary of State under Governor Richard Coke. Coke's election in 1873 ended the Reconstruction government of Governor Edmund J. Davis. The 1965 marker describes that change as returning Texas government to the hands of the people. You should know that its framing reflects the way many white Texans saw Reconstruction at the time. Historians today view the period very differently: they stress that the Reconstruction governments protected the civil and voting rights of Black Texans, and that those gains were rolled back after they ended.
Its place in the American story
DeBerry's story is a small-scale version of the South's history in the nineteenth century: cotton plantations, secession and war, and then the fierce fight over Reconstruction. The Coke administration was part of a wave across the former Confederacy in which conservative Democrats regained power, a process often called Redemption.
That shift shaped American life for generations. In Texas it led to a new state constitution in 1876 that limited state government. Across the South, the end of Reconstruction opened the way for segregation and the disenfranchisement of Black citizens. The marker's own 1965 wording is part of that history too, because it shows how that era was being remembered at the height of the civil rights movement.
The arrival of oil after 1900 connects DeBerry to another national story: the energy boom that remade East Texas and the American economy in the twentieth century.
If you visit
DeBerry is a small, rural community in the rolling, wooded country of East Texas, close to the Louisiana border. As you drive, look at the landscape and imagine it as the marker describes it: forests feeding a sawmill, fields of cotton, gins and market days, and later the equipment of the oil era.
The marker is a good starting point for a conversation about how history gets told. Read it carefully and notice its language. Then consider how an account of the same years might read if it were written by the families of people who had been enslaved in Panola County.
For a longer East Texas road trip, the surrounding towns of Panola County and nearby Shreveport, Louisiana offer more stops on the region's cotton, Civil War and oil history.
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
- · Alfred W. DeBerry
- · Richard Coke
Themes & tags
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