Henderson County C. S. A.
Athens, Henderson County, Texas
Marker Inscription
(Star and Wreath) Voted 400-49 for secession. Sent about 1,000 into Confederate Army, with one detachment of 150 having only 13 live to return. Caldwell's farm, three miles northeast, and Fincastle, 19 miles southeast of Athens, had camps of instruction. Confederate supply depot, Fincastle, had stores of grain, mean in charge of Capt. Thomas F. Murchison, who also was county enrolling officer. Wartime manufactures included earthenware jugs and dishes. Other products for C.S.A. were cotton, corn, beef, pork, timber. Cynthia Ann Parker, delivered from Indian captivity 1860 by Sul Ross' Ranger unit, lived during war at Athens. Postmaster-general of Confederacy was John H. Reagan, who had been surveyor and the first probate judge in Henderson County.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Henderson County voted overwhelmingly for secession in 1861 and sent roughly a thousand men into Confederate service, one detachment returning with only thirteen survivors. Camps of instruction and a supply depot at Fincastle gathered grain and goods, while local kilns turned out earthenware for the war effort. Among wartime residents were Cynthia Ann Parker, recovered from Comanche captivity in 1860, and John H. Reagan, who became the Confederacy's postmaster-general.
Why it matters
The county's story weaves together the Civil War home front, the tragedy of frontier captivity, and the national careers born in rural Texas, showing how the great conflicts of the era touched one community at once.
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Related people
- · Cynthia Ann Parker
- · John H. Reagan
- · Sul Ross
Related events
- · American Civil War
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Lightfoot-Miller Cemetery
Athens, TX
On a hill above the water, this family cemetery holds generations of Henderson County pioneers who arrived in the 1850s and 1860s to endure the hardships of early Texas life. Among them lie James Wilburn Miller, a Tennessee-born Civil War veteran, and his grandson Isadore, killed in action in World War I. Iron-ore rocks are said to mark several Indian graves, and the long-neglected burial ground was recently restored.
John H. Reagan
Canton, TX
Arriving in Nacogdoches in 1839, young John H. Reagan carried President Lamar's ultimatum to the Cherokees and rode with the Texas militia at the Battle of the Neches, the fight that killed Chiefs Bowles and Big Mush and drove the tribe from East Texas. He went on to survey and name new counties, judge East Texas courts including Canton's, and serve in Congress before becoming Postmaster General of the Confederacy, for which he was imprisoned in 1865. Rebuilding his career afterward, he helped frame the 1876 Texas constitution and became the state's first Railroad Commissioner.
Athens
Athens, TX
Laid out in 1850 and named — like so many hopeful young American towns — for the ancient seat of learning in Greece, Athens became the seat of Henderson County in the pine-and-prairie country of East Texas. During the Civil War it served as a supply depot and training ground, sending roughly a thousand men to the Confederate armies. In peacetime it leaned into manufacturing, farming, and folk tradition, later billing itself as the 'Black-eyed Peas Capital of the World' and home of the Old Fiddlers' Contest.
Henderson County Pottery Industry
Athens, TX
Long before Europeans arrived, Caddoan peoples worked the rich clay deposits of this region into fine pottery, drawing on resources the land offered in abundance. The modern industry began in 1857 when Levi S. Cogburn, from a Georgia family of potters, started making cups, saucers, and plates in Athens. After his death the trade revived in 1885 under M. K. Miller and his sons, whose Athens Pottery Company launched a run of tile, brick, and pottery plants that made Henderson County a ceramics center.