Delta County
Cooper, Delta County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Formed from Lamar and Hopkins counties. Created July 29, 1870. Organized October 6, 1870. The name describes its position and triangular shape. Cooper, the county seat
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Carved from parts of Lamar and Hopkins counties, Delta County was created on July 29, 1870, and organized that October during the Reconstruction era. Its name reflects its triangular shape, wedged between the forks of the Sulphur River, with the town of Cooper chosen as county seat.
Why it matters
County creation was the basic building block of settled government across the expanding United States, and Delta County's very name records how geography shaped the map of Texas.
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Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Oaklawn Cemetery
Cooper, TX
The first burials in Cooper were made on a hill near Dr. J. A. Blackwell's home — reputedly beginning with the young daughter of Dr. R. C. Andrews — but the site soon proved unsuitable. In 1891 Asa White donated five acres for a new cemetery, and most of the old graves were moved here, including the community's oldest surviving monument to Mary Cumming, born in 1791. The Independent Order of Odd Fellows tended the grounds and added land until Oaklawn Cemetery was chartered in 1959.
Turbeville, Sam B.
Cooper, TX
Born in Mississippi in 1856, Sam B. Turbeville came with his wife Saluda to Texas in 1879 and settled in Delta County as a farmer. Elected county sheriff in a contested special election in 1897, he served several terms, counseling young people and enforcing Prohibition. His career culminated in appointment as U.S. Marshal for the Eastern District of Texas.
Yates and Methodist Protestant Cemeteries
Cooper, TX
George and Mary Polly Wallace Yates brought their family to Texas in 1846 and settled newly formed Hopkins County land that would later become part of Delta County, raising livestock on nearly a thousand acres. When their fifteen-year-old daughter Mary died in 1855, she was buried on a hill near the family's log house, beginning the graveyard that still bears the family name. A later gift of land added the adjoining Methodist Protestant cemetery, and both burial grounds remain in the care of descendants.
Hiram Rattan
Cooper, TX
Hiram Rattan, born in 1805, came to Texas in 1835 and settled on his brother Larkin's land grant—ground that would later become the city of Paris—before both families moved to Delta County in 1839. Hiram earned two land grants raising grain and livestock, while Larkin chased the California Gold Rush before returning to Illinois. The family knew frontier hardship firsthand: four relatives were killed in Indian raids, and the Civil War split their loyalties without shaking their devotion to Texas.