J. H. Jones and the Old Settlers Reunion Grounds

🏛️The era

When J.H. Jones arrived in Texas in 1877, the state was coming out of Reconstruction and entering a period of rapid growth. Railroads were reaching into East Texas, cotton farming was spreading, and newcomers from the older Southern states, Alabama among them, were settling in counties like Wood. Quitman, the county seat, was a courthouse town where teachers, clerks, merchants and editors made up the backbone of civic life.

By the 1890s, the first generation of settlers who had broken the land was growing old. All over the country, communities began organizing old settlers' associations to honor them before they were gone. These groups held annual reunions with speeches, shared meals, music and a great deal of storytelling. They were part memorial, part homecoming and part county fair.

Wood County's association was organized in 1899, in the middle of that wave. The early twentieth century that followed brought automobiles, world war and modern life at a pace that made the frontier years feel more distant every season. That was exactly why people wanted to gather and remember them.

👥People & events

J.H. Jones was born in Alabama and came to Texas in 1877. His path through Wood County shows the kind of steady civic climb many newcomers made. He started as a schoolteacher, which was often how an educated young man earned his first standing in a new community. In 1886 the voters elected him clerk of Wood County. That office put him at the center of county records: deeds, marriages, court papers, the written memory of a place. He later became a successful merchant in Quitman.

The Old Settlers of Wood County Association took shape in 1899 under the leadership of James L. Ray, a newspaper editor. That fits the pattern well. Small-town editors were natural organizers and boosters, and a newspaper could spread word of a reunion across the whole county.

In 1902, three years after the association formed, Jones donated the property at this site as its permanent reunion grounds. A merchant who had prospered in Quitman gave the county's pioneers a place to gather. Here they held their annual homecoming, and apart from a short break during World War I, the tradition carried on year after year. Jones died in 1923 and Ray in 1929, but the gatherings outlived both of their founders.

In 1952 the reunion grounds were deeded to the Governor Hogg Shrine State Park. That tied Jones's gift to Quitman's best-known historic site, which honors James Stephen Hogg, the first native-born Texan to serve as governor of the state, who had deep personal ties to Quitman.

🇺🇸Its place in the American story

Old settlers' reunions were a genuinely national tradition. From the Midwest to the South to the Far West, communities in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries set aside a day each year to honor the people who had first farmed their land and built their towns. These gatherings helped Americans shape the story they told about themselves: a story of pioneers, hardship and community-building. That story shaped local memory and national identity alike.

The Wood County grounds show how that tradition often depended on generous individuals. A schoolteacher-turned-clerk-turned-merchant gave land. A newspaper editor rallied the county. Out of that came an institution lasting generations. Much of America's local heritage was preserved the same way, not by government programs but by neighbors deciding that their shared past was worth a permanent place.

The brief pause during World War I is a reminder of how deeply that war reached into small-town life, even far from the front. The 1952 transfer to a state park reflects another broad shift: in the twentieth century, states increasingly took responsibility for preserving historic places that communities had once kept up on their own.

🧭If you visit

You'll find this site in Quitman, the Wood County seat, where the reunion grounds became part of the park honoring Governor James Stephen Hogg. Walk the grounds and imagine them on a reunion day: families spreading out food, old-timers trading stories about the early years, and children running between the trees while speakers held forth.

Because the grounds are connected to the Governor Hogg Shrine, you can combine this marker with the broader historic site, which preserves places tied to Hogg's life in Quitman. Together they give you two sides of the same small town's history: its most famous public figure, and the ordinary pioneers it gathered each year to honor.

Quitman makes a pleasant stop on an East Texas drive through lake country and piney woods, and it has the character of a classic courthouse town. Spend some time around the square and look for other historical markers nearby.

Check current details and any event schedules with local sources before you go. If the community still holds homecoming activities here, timing your visit to match one could let you see a tradition more than a century old.