Newton County
Newton, Newton County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Formed from Jasper County; created April 22, 1846, organized July 13, 1846. Named in honor of Sergeant John Newton, 1752-1807. Hero of the American Revolution. County seat, Newton, 1846; Burkeville, 1848; Newton, since 1853.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Newton County was carved from Jasper County and organized in 1846, just as Texas joined the United States, and named for Sergeant John Newton, a hero of the American Revolution. Its county seat bounced between Newton and Burkeville before settling permanently at Newton in 1853. The naming honored a Revolutionary legacy even as a new American county took shape on the Louisiana border.
Why it matters
The county's creation captures the moment Texas entered the Union, extending American county government and its Revolutionary namesakes across the frontier.
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Related people
- · John Newton
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Wilson Chapel Cemetery
Newton, TX
This burial ground grew up around Wilson Chapel, credited to David McMahon, Newton County's first attorney, and holds a remarkable cross-section of the county's pioneer leaders. Among them are a Methodist minister, an early county organizer said to have been the youngest soldier at San Jacinto and later a Civil War veteran, and an English army captain turned frontier schoolteacher. Their marked graves, alongside others only remembered by name, sketch the first generation to build a community here.
Ford Chapel, Cemetery, and School
Bon Wier, TX
The Ford family arrived in the piney woods of Newton County before 1880 and, over a generation, planted the three institutions a frontier community needed most. A cemetery took shape on J.D. and Ida Ford's land, its earliest documented grave that of their three-year-old daughter in 1880; a one-room log school opened in 1893; and a frame Methodist chapel rose in 1910. Though regular worship ended in the 1930s and the school folded into Newton's district by 1930, descendants formed an association in 1961 to keep the sites tended.
First Baptist Church of Newton
Newton, TX
This East Texas congregation traces its roots to 1861, when the Newton Baptist Church—about thirty-five members strong—joined the Bethlehem Association and baptized converts in the waters of Caney Creek. It built its first sanctuary around 1882, took the name First Baptist Church in 1915, and has worshiped at its present site since 1949. For more than a century and a half it has been woven into the religious life of Newton County.
Town of Newton
Newton, TX
When Newton was laid out in 1853 in Texas's easternmost county, it was little more than a stand of oaks and beeches—yet its central location won it the county seat that very year. Major John Moore built its first house and its first frame courthouse, and for decades the town crept along, counting just four buildings in 1859. The railroad's arrival in 1905 finally spurred growth, and sawmills turning the surrounding forests into baskets, tool handles, turpentine, and furniture made timber the backbone of the town's economy.