HistoricSiteMarkers
Early RepublicReconstruction & Gilded Age

Home of Col. Charles DeMorse

Clarksville, Red River County, Texas

Marker Inscription

Home of Col. Charles DeMorse (1816-1887), pioneer soldier, statesman and publisher. Founder and Editor of the Northern Standard, 1842-1887. First and most important newspaper in the region during that period. Around two log rooms built in 1833, he erected his colonial home in which he resided until his death. Occupied continuously since by his descendants. Could this old home, that he so loved, speak fascinating tales it might unfold.

Erected by Texas Historical Commission

The Story

Charles DeMorse (1816โ€“1887) was a pioneer soldier, statesman, and newspaperman who founded and edited the Northern Standard from 1842 to 1887, the region's first and most influential newspaper. Around two log rooms built in 1833 he raised a larger home where he lived until his death, and which his descendants long occupied afterward.

Why it matters

As the voice of Northeast Texas for nearly half a century, DeMorse's press shaped public life in a frontier region just as it grew from republic to statehood.

Own a business near here? Add it to the map.

Related people

  • ยท Charles DeMorse

Themes & tags

Nearby & related markers

De Kalb

DeKalb, TX

De Kalb was named for Revolutionary War hero Maj. Gen. Johann de Kalb at the 1836 suggestion of David Crockett, who passed through on his way to fight in the Texas Revolution, as did James Fannin and William B. Travis. Settled by 1831, the town claimed the first college in Bowie County (1839), an early Masonic lodge, and a brief turn as county seat, and it sat on early stage lines and, later, the Texas & Pacific Railroad. Sawmills and, legend says, the nearby hideouts of outlaws like Sam Bass and Jesse James all figure in its lively frontier story.

Early Sulphur Bluff

Sulphur Bluff, TX

The first known settlers at Sulphur Bluff were the family of John Gregg, whose cemetery holds a marker from the Republic of Texas era in 1837. The Hargrave brothers came from Indiana and built brush-roofed log homes on a high bluff above the Sulphur River, where game was plentiful and the height offered safety. Robert Hargrave, a mechanical talent, ran a woodworking shop, a blacksmith shop, and a grist mill that drew customers from fifty miles away; a post office followed in 1849 and a school in 1852.

Mount Joy Cemetery

Cooper, TX

In the days of the Republic of Texas, settlers put down roots at Mount Joy, and by the 1880s it had grown into a bustling farming hub with steam-powered cotton gins, a gristmill, and stagecoach links to neighboring towns. Churches and the cemetery anchored the community, whose first recorded burial dates to 1873. When the post office closed and commerce moved on, the town faded, but its cemetery endures as a record of the families who built it.

Monticello Missionary Baptist Church

Mount Pleasant, TX

The community of Monticello, named for Thomas Jefferson's Virginia home, took shape in the 1850s and won a post office in 1857, growing into a small hub of mills, gins, a brick factory and a school. Its Baptist congregation appears in association records by 1878 and in 1919 moved to this site, where members donated pine trees, hauled the logs by mule wagon to a local mill, and raised a cross-gabled frame sanctuary in just three months. The church long served as the community's spiritual and social heart, and by the 21st century, as lignite mining and recreational lakes reshaped the land, it stood as one of Monticello's last historic landmarks.