Fannin County
Bonham, Fannin County, Texas
Marker Inscription
This area was first settled by Anglo- Americans who traveled up the Red River by steamboat in 1836. Fannin County was created in 1837, organized 1838, and named for James W. Fannin (1805-36), who was massacred with his soldiers at Goliad (March 27, 1836) after surrendering to the Mexican army. County officials first met at Jacob Black's cabin on the Red River. The county seat was moved in 1840 to Warren and in 1843 to Bois d' Arc, which was renamed in 1844 in honor of James Butler Bonham (1807-36), a hero of the siege of the Alamo.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Anglo-American settlers reached this stretch of the Red River by steamboat in 1836, and Fannin County was created the next year, organized in 1838. It honors James W. Fannin, executed with his surrendered command at Goliad in March 1836, one of the darkest episodes of the Texas Revolution. County officials first met at Jacob Black's cabin, and the seat wandered from Warren to Bois d'Arc — renamed Bonham in 1844 for Alamo defender James Butler Bonham.
Why it matters
The county's very name and geography memorialize the sacrifices of the Texas Revolution while charting how newly won land was surveyed, organized, and settled.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
In 1836 Texas was a brand-new, uncertain republic. That spring it had won its independence from Mexico at a terrible cost, and its government was trying to turn huge stretches of thinly settled land into counties, courts, and towns. The far northeastern corner along the Red River was frontier in every sense. It sat on the border with the United States and was home to Native peoples whose lands newcomers were moving onto.
For settlers, rivers were the highways. Overland travel through the forests and prairies was slow and hard, but steamboats could carry families, tools, and goods a long way upstream. The Anglo-Americans who first settled this area came up the Red River by steamboat in 1836, the same year Texas fought for its independence.
The Republic quickly began carving its territory into counties, and it often named them for the heroes of the revolution. Fannin County was created in 1837 and organized in 1838. Its name tied this far-off borderland to the most painful events of the fight just won.
People & events
The county is named for James W. Fannin, who commanded Texian troops at Goliad during the revolution. In March 1836 his force was caught by the Mexican army on the open prairie and surrendered. On March 27, Palm Sunday, Fannin and his men were executed on Santa Anna's orders. The Goliad Massacre, along with the fall of the Alamo, became a rallying cry for the Texian army, which won at San Jacinto less than a month later.
County government started out modestly. The first officials met in Jacob Black's cabin on the Red River, a reminder of how basic frontier government was. A county did not need a courthouse to exist. It needed people willing to hold office, record deeds, and keep order, wherever they could find a roof.
The county seat moved more than once. In 1840 it went to Warren, and in 1843 to a settlement called Bois d'Arc, named for the hard, thorny tree also known as Osage orange. In 1844 that town was renamed Bonham for James Butler Bonham, a defender of the Alamo. Bonham, a South Carolinian, is remembered for riding back into the besieged mission after carrying messages out, and he died there when it fell on March 6, 1836.
Its place in the American story
Fannin County shows how a young nation remembers. By naming a county for Fannin and its seat for Bonham, Texans turned two men's deaths in the same terrible month into permanent features of the map. Every deed, court record, and letter addressed here carries their names.
The county's early history also reflects the bigger American story of westward settlement. Steamboats, river landings, cabin governments, and county seats that kept moving were common across the frontier, from the Ohio Valley to the Mississippi and beyond. Texas followed the same pattern, even while it was briefly an independent republic.
And because this land faced the United States across the Red River, it was part of the link between Texas and the nation it joined in 1845. The settlers who came upriver brought American laws, habits, and ambitions that helped steer the Republic toward annexation.
If you visit
Bonham is a classic Texas county seat, built around its courthouse square. Walk the square and imagine it in the 1840s, when the town had just traded the name of a tree for the name of an Alamo hero. Statues and markers around town honor James Butler Bonham, so look for them as you explore.
The Red River, where the first settlers landed and the first officials met, lies a short drive north. Seeing that wide, red-brown river helps you picture how isolated and far-flung this corner of Texas once was.
This stop pairs well with a Texas Revolution road trip. Goliad and the Alamo are far to the south, but standing in a county named for one and a town named for the other shows how the memory of 1836 spread across the whole state. Bonham is also known as the hometown of longtime U.S. House Speaker Sam Rayburn, so a history-minded visitor will find more than one era to explore here.
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
- · James W. Fannin
- · James Butler Bonham
- · Jacob Black
Related events
- · Goliad Massacre
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Col. James Tarleton
Bonham, TX
In late 1835 James Tarleton raised a company of 36 riflemen in his native Kentucky and set out for Texas, arriving to find San Antonio already liberated. Though an officer, he fought in the ranks at the victory of San Jacinto in April 1836. Having lost his wife Nancy in Kentucky that same year, he settled afterward in Fannin County with his son Robert.
John P. Simpson
Bonham, TX
A Tennessee native, John P. Simpson reached the raw new county of Fannin about 1837 and signed the petition that created it, in a region named for a hero of the Texas Revolution. He farmed here and became one of its first officeholders, serving as sheriff and chief justice, and he donated the land that became Bonham's courthouse square and downtown. He also led the Fannin Guards, a citizen militia that guarded this stretch of frontier.
Moore's Chapel Cemetery
Bonham, TX
Alexander Moore and his wife Mary Jane brought their family from Missouri to this part of Fannin County in 1857, and in the mid-1870s donated two acres to a growing community for a cemetery, with neighbor Martha Cashion the first recorded burial in 1876. A Baptist sanctuary rose just to the north on land the Moores also gave, and church, school, and graveyard together became the community center known as Moore's Chapel. A grim cluster of infant graves from the 1880s and 1890s records a typhoid outbreak, while veterans from the Civil War through World War II rest among the pioneer families still tended by a cemetery association.
Ladonia Cemetery
Ladonia, TX
The chief burial ground of Ladonia grew from two sections—an I.O.O.F. (Odd Fellows) cemetery and a Presbyterian one—before their management merged around 1902. Among its earliest graves are an infant from 1866, the "Stranger's Tomb" of an unknown traveler who died in 1867, and Baptist pastor and Civil War veteran William Lovelace Foster. Over generations it gathered in Fannin County officials, early settlers, and veterans of the Civil War and both World Wars.