Erwin Evans Smith
Honey Grove, Fannin County, Texas
Marker Inscription
(August 22, 1886 - September 4, 1947) Artist-photographer Erwin Evans Smith, a Fannin County native, was enchanted as a youth with the culture and folklore of ranching in the southwest. He studied art in Chicago and Boston in hopes of becoming a western sculptor. For several summers in the early 1900s, he visited ranches to sketch and photograph cowboys at work and leisure. He never realized his dream of sculpting but left over 2000 photographs as a priceless record of life on the range.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
A Fannin County native, Erwin Evans Smith was captivated as a youth by the culture and folklore of Southwestern ranching. He studied art in Chicago and Boston hoping to become a Western sculptor, and through the early 1900s spent his summers on working ranches, sketching and photographing cowboys at their labor and leisure. Though he never realized his dream of sculpting, he left behind more than two thousand photographs that stand as a priceless record of life on the open range.
Why it matters
Smith's photographs preserved the vanishing world of the working cowboy at the very moment the open range was closing, giving America an authentic visual record of its cattle-country heritage.
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Related people
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Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Samuel Augustus Erwin
Honey Grove, TX
Virginia-born Samuel Erwin, married in Tennessee in a ceremony performed by the frontiersman David Crockett, became the first settler of the Honey Grove area when he arrived in 1837. A surveyor by trade, he laid out land grants for fellow pioneers and platted the townsite for his friend B. S. Walcott in 1848. He also served as the town's first postmaster and one of Fannin County's earliest justices of the peace.
Benjamin Stuart Walcott
Honey Grove, TX
A New Englander who came to Fannin County in 1846, Benjamin Stuart Walcott founded and developed the town of Honey Grove. He opened its first store in a settler's log cabin, built the first frame store when the town was platted in 1848, erected its first school in 1853, and gave land for a Union Church in 1856. His sons went on to become community leaders in their own right.
James G. Gilmer
Honey Grove, TX
James G. Gilmer moved from Kentucky in 1845 with his wife Elizabeth and their children, part of the wave of Anglo-American settlers pushing into North Texas; his son James P. is said to have been the first such child born at present-day Honey Grove. Gilmer died only months after settling, and his burial founded the local cemetery, while the town later rose on the land grant he left to his wife.
Honey Grove City Hall
Honey Grove, TX
A decade after Honey Grove incorporated, Mayor J. P. Gilmer pressed the council in 1885 to build a proper city hall and jail, and the surviving minutes record every step—choosing a lot, arranging financing, and even rejecting the county's offer of aid when commissioners demanded a quarter interest. Built of stone from the local Floyd Quarry by contractor W. N. Allen, it opened in 1889 and remains Fannin County's only original civic building still standing. It is a rare survivor of small-town self-government in the Gilded Age.