Montague County
Bowie, Montague County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Created December 24, 1857; organized August 2, 1858; named in honor of Daniel Montague 1798-1876; Pioneer Texas surveyor and Indian fighter; commander of a company in the Mexican War; Montague, County Seat
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Montague County was carved out of the North Texas frontier in 1857 and organized the next year, taking its name from Daniel Montague, a pioneer surveyor who mapped the region and fought as a militia commander in the Mexican War. Surveyors like Montague were the advance guard of Anglo settlement, translating raw land into the grid of counties and farms. The town of Montague became its seat.
Why it matters
The county's creation and namesake capture the surveying and frontier soldiering that opened North Texas to settlement.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Daniel Montague
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
City of Bowie
Bowie, TX
Bowie owes its existence to the railroad. In the 1870s the Fort Worth and Denver Railroad bought land here, and as crews laid track from Decatur a canvas settlement dubbed "Tent City" sprang up alongside the rails. When the line was finished, permanent buildings followed, and the town — named for Texas hero James Bowie — incorporated in 1883 as a market and financial hub for the farmers and ranchers between Fort Worth and Wichita Falls, growing to become the largest city in Montague County.
Elmwood Cemetery
Bowie, TX
Settler James W. Stallings donated the first land for this cemetery in 1880, two years before the town of Bowie was platted nearby along the Fort Worth and Denver Railroad. Willie B. Nelson, a settler's young son, was the first burial, and Stallings would soon lay several of his own family here. Over the decades the grounds grew, gained a native-stone wall built by Civilian Conservation Corps crews in the 1930s, and became the resting place of veterans from the Civil War through Vietnam.
Briar Creek Cemetery
Bowie, TX
After the Civil War, with new rail lines opening and frontier conflicts fading, settlers poured into this corner of Montague County — and many of those pioneers now rest at Briar Creek. The earliest burials, in the late 1870s, were Kentucky-born G.W. Simmons and an infant of the Dooley family; land for the graveyard was later deeded by Simmons's sister Margaret and her husband, G.W. Burnett. An early school once stood on the adjoining land, but only the cemetery survives to mark where the community's first families lived and died.
Lindale Cemetery
Bowie, TX
Named for the Lindale School District, this Montague County burial ground was established in 1880 when the Gibbins family sold a single acre to school trustees for four dollars. The graves gather generations of the farming families — Cooper, Griffin, Thomas and others — who settled the Lindale community, along with veterans of both World Wars. By the close of the century more than 250 graves marked the site.