Norsworthy-Kellie Homestead, "Glorianna"
Jasper, Jasper County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Jasper County pioneer Ehud Norsworthy purchased 405 acres of land at this site in 1859. With his wife, Sara, and children, he established a homestead which included a house, barn, smokehouse, well, tool shed, and outhouse. After Norsworthy's death in 1864, Sara married Confederate veteran Edwin Irwin Kellie, and they continued to live on the homestead with their family. Kellie founded the "Jasper News-Boy" newspaper and later became a riverboat captain. the homestead, named "Glorianna" by Kellie, was abandoned by the family about 1900.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Jasper County pioneer Ehud Norsworthy bought 405 acres here in 1859 and built a homestead complete with house, barn, smokehouse, well, and outbuildings. After his death in 1864, his widow Sara married Confederate veteran Edwin Irwin Kellie — founder of the "Jasper News-Boy" and later a riverboat captain — who named the place "Glorianna." The family worked the land until abandoning it around 1900.
Why it matters
The homestead captures the rhythms of pioneer family life in East Texas, from settlement through the disruptions of the Civil War to the community's turn-of-the-century decline.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
In 1859, Jasper County sat in the deep piney woods of East Texas, near the Louisiana border. It was a country of tall timber, rivers, and scattered farms. Texas had been a state for less than fifteen years, and families from the older Southern states were still moving west to claim land and build new lives.
That was the world Ehud Norsworthy stepped into when he bought 405 acres here. A homestead in that time and place had to be nearly self-sufficient. Families raised their own food, preserved meat, hauled water, and built and repaired almost everything they used.
The timing turned out to be hard. Within two years Texas had left the Union, and the Civil War reached into nearly every Southern household. Men went off to fight, and women like Sara Norsworthy ran farms and raised children through years of shortage and uncertainty.
The decades after the war brought Reconstruction and slow change. By the end of the century, new transportation and a changing economy had pulled many rural families away from their old homeplaces. The Norsworthy-Kellie family left theirs around 1900.
People & events
The story starts with Ehud Norsworthy, a Jasper County pioneer who built a working homestead here with his wife, Sara, and their children. The marker lists what that took: a house, a barn, a smokehouse, a well, a tool shed, and an outhouse. Each one had a job. The smokehouse kept meat through the year, the well gave the family water, and the barn and tool shed kept the farm going.
Ehud died in 1864, while the Civil War was still being fought. That left Sara to keep the family and the land together. Afterward she married Edwin Irwin Kellie, a Confederate veteran, and the blended family stayed on at the homestead Ehud had started.
Kellie turns out to be a colorful figure. He founded a newspaper, the "Jasper News-Boy," in an era when small-town papers were how communities kept up with local news, politics, and one another. He later became a riverboat captain, a job that connected the piney woods to the wider world through the region's rivers.
Kellie also gave the place its name: "Glorianna." Naming a homestead was a small act of pride and affection, and the name has outlasted the family's time on the land. They left it around 1900.
Its place in the American story
Glorianna is not a battlefield or a famous mansion. It matters because it is ordinary, the kind of place where much of American history actually happened. Families like the Norsworthys and Kellies settled the South's western edge one farm at a time, building homes, raising children, and making a living from the land.
In one household, the homestead shows how the Civil War changed family life. A husband died during the war, a widow carried on, and a returning Confederate veteran joined the family and helped rebuild it. Families across the South went through the same kind of loss and rebuilding.
Kellie's life also reflects how rural communities stayed connected. Small newspapers and river commerce were two of the main ways that isolated places in the 1800s kept in touch with each other and with the rest of the nation.
Finally, the family's departure around 1900 fits a larger national pattern. Around the turn of the century, many Americans left old rural homesteads for towns, new work, and a changing economy.
If you visit
Come to the Glorianna marker in a quiet, reflective frame of mind. This is East Texas piney woods country, and the pines, the humid air, and the stillness help you picture what pioneer life here felt like.
As you stand at the marker, think about the homestead it describes: a house with a barn, smokehouse, well, and outbuildings around it, and a family working the land through war and hard years. Very little of that kind of rural life survives on the landscape, so a marker like this helps you see what is no longer there.
Respect private property in the area. Enjoy the site from the marker instead of wandering onto land that isn't open to the public.
Glorianna fits easily into a slow drive through the Jasper County area and the wider Big Thicket and piney woods region. There, small towns, rivers, and roadside markers together tell the story of how deep East Texas was settled.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Related people
- · Ehud Norsworthy
- · Sara Norsworthy Kellie
- · Edwin Irwin Kellie
Themes & tags
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