International Boundary Marker
Carthage, Panola County, Texas
Marker Inscription
In the early 1700s, France and Spain began disputing their New World international boundary that included this area; each nation claimed what is now Texas. When the U.S. purchased the Louisiana Territory from France in 1803, the boundary was still in dispute. Leaders agreed to a neutral area between the Arroyo Hondo and the Sabine River, and the 1819 Adams-Onís Treaty formally defined the border. When Texas became a republic in 1836, it appointed a joint commission with the U.S. to survey and mark the established boundary from the Gulf of Mexico up the Sabine River and on to the Red River. John Forsyth represented the U.S., and Memucan Hunt represented Texas in the work, which proved to be long and difficult. The survey crew began the demarcation process on May 20, 1840 at the Gulf, placing a 36-foot pole in the middle of a large earthen mound. Proceeding north, they placed eight-foot posts denoting the number of miles from the 32nd parallel. Upon reaching the parallel, they placed a granite marker on the west bank of the Sabine River. From that point, they traveled due north to the Red River, completing their work in late June 1841. As a result of erosion, the first granite marker on the Sabine fell into the river long ago, but a second granite marker on the northward path of the surveyors had been placed here to mark the north-south meridian. This is the only known marker remaining, and it is believed to be the only original international boundary marker within the contiguous U.S. Today, the border between Texas and Louisiana follows the Sabine River to the 32nd parallel, at which point it connects to the boundary established by Hunt and Forsyth. The Texas Historical Foundation purchased this site to provide public access to the early boundary marker.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
For more than a century, France, Spain, and later the United States disputed where their empires met in this borderland, a quarrel finally settled by the 1819 Adams-Onís Treaty. After Texas won independence, a joint U.S.-Texas commission led by John Forsyth and Memucan Hunt spent 1840–41 surveying and marking the line from the Gulf up the Sabine to the Red River. The granite marker preserved here is believed to be the only surviving original international boundary marker within the contiguous United States.
Why it matters
It is a rare physical trace of the shifting imperial borders that shaped North America, standing where three nations once contested the edge of Texas.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · John Forsyth
- · Memucan Hunt
Related events
- · Adams-Onís Treaty (1819)
- · U.S.–Texas boundary survey (1840–1841)
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
B. F. Morris and the Town of Joaquin
Joaquin, TX
Alabama-born Benjamin Franklin Morris came to Texas in 1838 and settled the pioneer village of Sarat, becoming a prosperous farmer and rancher. In 1884 he gave the Houston, East & West Texas Railroad a right of way through 500 acres and provided a 100-acre townsite—named for his grandson Joaquin—on the condition that a depot be built and passenger trains stop daily. A Confederate veteran, Morris also donated land for the town's First Baptist Church.
Fellowship Baptist Church
Joaquin, TX
Founded by settlers who crossed the Sabine River by ferry as early as 1818, Fellowship Baptist Church is among the oldest Baptist congregations in Texas, ministering through the Republic of Texas era. Worshippers rode miles by farm wagon to gather in a log building heated by an eight-foot fireplace, with split-log benches and shutter-covered, glassless windows that doubled as a schoolhouse in season. Its first pastor, Rev. Wyatt S. Childress, was kin to George C. Childress, an author of the Texas Declaration of Independence.
Site of Town of Spivey, 1870s-1900
Paxton, TX
Founded by Civil War veteran James Jackson Spivey, the town of Spivey grew up around a station on the Houston East & West Texas Railroad built across his land in 1886. A lumber mill, post office, and Baptist church followed, but after 1900 the community drifted over to nearby Paxton Switch, leaving only the Friendship Cemetery and its thirty-three graves to mark the site.
Truitt Cemetery
Joaquin, TX
James Truitt and his wife Sarah left North Carolina in 1838 and settled near this site in 1840, when Texas was still an independent republic. Truitt served in the Republic's congress and, after statehood, in the Texas legislature as both representative and senator. The family sent sons into the Regulator-Moderator War, the Mexican War, and the Civil War, and several generations of Truitts rest in this cemetery founded at Sarah's death in 1848.