Monte Verdi Family Slaves
Cushing, Rusk County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Monte Verdi, the 10,700-acre antebellum plantation of Julien Sidney Devereux and Sarah (Landrum) Devereux Garrison, was one of the most economically and historically significant plantations in the state. Devereux family papers at regional and state archives preserve a record of names of the enslaved people who labored here. Their written family history begins with Scott and Tabby, born 1792 and 1787 respectively, the eldest in John William Devereux’s group of slaves who were taken with their children and grandchildren from Georgia to Alabama to Texas. Documented African American families at Monte Verdi in 1846 included Scott and Tabby, their son, Anderson, and his wife (unnamed). Other couples included Judy and Jim, Sam (from the Loftus plantation) and (Eliza Henry) Mariah, Jinny and Peter, Joanna and Joe, (el) Mina and Walton, Maria and Lewis, and Green and Phoebe, who founded the Anadarco (Anadarko) Christian church and school in 1868. Julien Devereux’s 1856 probate records name 80 slaves on the estate. After obtaining their freedom in 1865, these resilient men and women paved the way for better lives for themselves and future generations. Some families stayed in the area, continuing to work and live in villages and communities which comprise the former lands of Monte Verdi. As documented in the 1870-1900 U.S. Census and other records, descendants of the 80 Monte Verdi slaves rarely adopted the surname Devereux, but instead names including Anderson, Bagley, Blanton, Booker, Bowens, Bradley (Julien’s first wife’s family), Brantley, Caddell, Cary, Cooper, Freeny, Henry, Lewis, Loftis, McDaniel, Owens, Spencer, Sturns, Tipps, Williams and others. Today these family names are recognized for their humanitarian contributions. (2018)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Monte Verdi was the 10,700-acre plantation of Julien Sidney Devereux, and this marker names the enslaved men, women, and children whose labor sustained it—people like Scott and Tabby, born in the 1780s and 1790s, carried from Georgia to Alabama to Texas, and the many families documented in 1846 and in the 1856 probate that listed 80 enslaved people. Freed in 1865, they built new lives on the plantation's former lands, and their descendants—rarely taking the Devereux name—carried surnames like Anderson, Booker, Henry, and Lewis into the surrounding communities. One couple, Green and Phoebe, founded the Anadarko Christian church and school in 1868.
Why it matters
By recording enslaved people by name, the marker restores individual identity to those whom plantation records usually reduced to numbers, and traces the freedpeople and families who built the community that followed.
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Related people
- · Julien Sidney Devereux
- · Green and Phoebe
Related events
- · Emancipation
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Monte Verdi
Rusk County, TX
Built by Julien Sidney Devereux (1805–1856)—a justice of the peace, county commissioner, and legislator—Monte Verdi was a frontier interpretation of southern Greek Revival architecture, set so high on his roughly 10,000-acre plantation that much of Rusk, Cherokee, and Nacogdoches counties could be seen from its upstairs porch. It was one of the most significant antebellum plantations in Texas, worked by scores of enslaved people whose labor made its scale possible. The house was named a Recorded Texas Historic Landmark in 1964.
Anadarko Rosenwald School
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In 1868 formerly enslaved people from the Devereaux plantation founded the community of Anadarko and the Anadarko Christian Church, which hosted the area's first Black public school. With $900 from Julius Rosenwald's fund, plus public and family donations, a three-teacher Rosenwald School was built here in 1926, later renamed for principal U. E. Allen. Only the gymnasium's pier-and-beam foundation now remains of the school that served the community until integration.
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