Joseph Herrington
Huntington vicinity, Angelina County, Texas
Marker Inscription
When Angelina County was organized in 1846, Alabama native Joseph Herrington (1823 - 89) was one of six men appointed by the legislature who set boundary lines and selected Marion as the first seat of government. That same year, at the age of 22, he was elected the county's first chief justice (county judge). His accomplishments during five terms in the office, including improved trade routes and the establishment of county school districts, were vital to the area's growth. An active Mason, he was buried here in the Herrington Family Cemetery. (1982)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
When Angelina County was organized in 1846, Alabama-born Joseph Herrington was among six men appointed to set its boundaries and choose Marion as the first county seat. Just twenty-two, he was elected the county's first chief justice and, across five terms, helped open trade routes and establish county school districts. An active Mason, he was laid to rest in the family cemetery here.
Why it matters
His work laying out a brand-new county and founding its schools shows how ordinary young settlers built the civic scaffolding of frontier Texas in the years just after statehood.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Joseph Herrington
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Prairie Grove
Diboll vicinity, TX
Prairie Grove took shape in 1845 as a gathering place for East Texas settlers, its cemetery beginning in 1849 with the burial of a young Stovall daughter. A combined school and church built in the 1880s became the community's heart, evolving into the Prairie Grove Missionary Baptist Church by 1921. Though the school closed in 1948, the church and cemetery have served the area for well over a century.
Chinquapin Cemetery (Loggins Family Burial Ground)
San Augustine, TX
Martin and Susanna Loggins emigrated from Tennessee in 1839, and within months the deaths of two of their children began the Loggins Family Burial Ground. Around it the Chinquapin settlement grew, with a log church, a store, and a school that opened in 1854 and endured on the site beside the cemetery until 1957. Renamed Chinquapin Cemetery after the burial ground passed to a trustee board in 1977, it now holds more than 200 monuments, including a dozen Republic of Texas markers.
Mount Hope Lodge No. 121, A. F. & A. M.
Chester, TX
Mount Hope Lodge is the oldest continuously chartered Masonic lodge in Tyler County, tracing its roots to an 1834 land grant and a mid-1850s meeting hall that doubled as a Protestant church and schoolhouse on the East Texas frontier. Chartered in 1853 and later moved to the new town of Chester, the lodge drew notable Tyler countians over the years — including future congressman Samuel Bronson Cooper, lumber magnate John Henry Kirby, and Governor Allan Shivers, who spoke at its 1953 centennial.
Brookeland United Methodist Church
Brookeland, TX
The Brookeland area was served by pioneer Methodist circuit riders as early as the 1840s, when preachers like Thomas Jefferson Jacks brought worship into settlers' cabins on the Bear Creek circuit. In 1876 Mary L. White Hamilton conveyed three acres for a church, school, and cemetery, giving rise to what became Brookeland United Methodist Church. A permanent sanctuary followed in 1907, and the congregation held steady through the Great Depression and decades of population decline.