Jesse P. Loving
Sherman, Grayson County, Texas
Marker Inscription
(1836-1919) Missouri native Jesse "Jess" P. Loving came to Texas with his family in 1847. They settled first near relatives in Denton County, and moved to Sherman in Grayson County in 1852. Loving married Lydia Ellen Bomar in 1859. A Confederate veteran, he became a prominent civic leader, serving multiple terms as county treasurer and state representative. In 1879 Loving was the driving force behind the establishment of the Old Settlers Association of Grayson County. Jesse and Lydia Loving were charter members of the Houston Street Christian Church and were the parents of nine children. RECORDED-2000
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Jesse "Jess" P. Loving came to Texas from Missouri in 1847 and settled in Sherman by 1852. A Confederate veteran, he became a leading citizen, serving multiple terms as county treasurer and in the state legislature. In 1879 he drove the founding of the Old Settlers Association of Grayson County, helping the pioneer generation preserve its own story.
Why it matters
Loving's life bridges the frontier, the Confederacy, and the civic institutions that memorialized early Texas, showing how the first settlers shaped how their era would be remembered.
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Related people
- · Jesse P. Loving
- · Lydia Ellen Bomar Loving
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Grayson County, C. S. A.
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During the Civil War, Grayson County served as a Confederate military, defense, and supply hub on Texas's northern frontier. Cavalry regiments raised here captured federal forts in Indian Territory and manned a defensive line along the Red River, while Sherman depots gathered clothing and food for troops and soldiers' families. Even the notorious guerrilla William C. Quantrill camped nearby in 1863–64 before fleeing Confederate arrest.
The Fitzgerald Home
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George S. Fitzgerald moved his family from Virginia to Texas in 1857 and cut the building timber for this house on his own 800-acre farm in 1859. Interrupted by service in the Confederate army, he finally raised the pegged-oak house in 1866 and went on to prosper as a respected Grayson County commissioner. Its sturdy 20-foot rooms and twin staircases reflect the substance of a rebuilding postwar household.
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Settled in 1848 by Grayson County pioneers who reclaimed land from wilderness amid Indian raids and frontier hardship, Old Cedar quickly needed a cemetery—still holding some 400 graves, including one Union and eighteen Confederate veterans. As the community took root it built Cedar Academy in 1871, where students learned to make ink and split goose-quills alongside their lessons, and organized the Cedar Methodist Church the same year. Camp-ground revivals under brush arbors drew families from miles around each summer.
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While David Harman Coffman served in the Confederate army during the Civil War, his wife Harriet and their four sons made their way from Missouri to North Texas. After the war he rejoined them and bought this land, and in 1878 the Coffmans deeded a one-acre plot to the county for a public cemetery and an adjoining acre for a school and Baptist meetinghouse. Among those buried here is J.K. Miller, the pioneer on whose land the city of Denison was laid out.