Round Table Inn
Burkeville, Newton County, Texas
Marker Inscription
On this site stood Harrell House, built in 1865 by Confederate veteran David F. Harrell to serve stagecoaches and others traveling military road. Renamed for its food-laden, hand-made lazy Susan table, seating 12 to 15 quests. Burned, 1927. Rebuilt and still run by granddaughter Helen Duncan. (1965)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Confederate veteran David F. Harrell built the Harrell House here in 1865 to serve travelers on the military road, including stagecoach passengers. It became famous for a huge handmade lazy Susan table that seated a dozen or more guests, earning it the name Round Table Inn. Burned in 1927, it was rebuilt and, at the time of the marker, still run by Harrell's granddaughter.
Why it matters
Roadside inns like this one kept people and news moving across a still-remote East Texas, and its survival across three generations speaks to the endurance of family enterprise.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · David F. Harrell
- · Helen Duncan
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Wiergate
Wiergate, TX
A 1917 deal between Houston lumberman Robert W. Wier and the Lutcher and Moore Lumber Company set off the construction of one of East Texas' largest sawmill complexes, cutting into vast stands of virgin longleaf pine. By 1922 a full company town of some 550 homes, churches, schools, a hotel, and shops had risen around the mill, its neighborhoods segregated by race and ethnicity in the manner of the era. The mill ran continuously for a quarter-century until 1942, but unlike most East Texas lumber towns, Wiergate survived its mill's closing.
The Old Beef Road
Burkeville, TX
By 1840 the Beef Road had become a vital artery across the Sabine River borderlands, replacing the earlier Zavala Road and taking its name from the cattle driven along it from the Huntsville and Liberty regions toward Louisiana markets. Near this spot it forked into three branches, each heading to a different crossing and destination, with "beef pens" set along the way to corral cattle overnight. During the Civil War it served as a Confederate supply route until Union control of the Mississippi in July 1863 choked off the eastern drives, and the postwar rise of the Kansas railheads finished its decline.
Site of Old Burr's Ferry (At Highway Bridge)
Newton, TX
In the settlement era of the early 1800s, this Sabine River crossing was one of only four main gateways for pioneers entering Texas from Louisiana, letting families bring their stock and household goods across the border. Known first as Hickman's Ferry and later for Dr. Timothy Burr — a second cousin of Vice President Aaron Burr — it also anchored "the Old Beef Trail," over which thousands of cattle were driven to Alexandria for shipment to New Orleans. By the Civil War the site was strategic enough that Confederates dug breastworks and cleared timber to guard against Federal invasion.
Toledo Bend
Burkeville, TX
For centuries the great curve of the Sabine River known as Toledo Bend was a crossroads of the East Texas borderlands—a landmark for Spanish explorers and missionaries, and later a contested edge of the Neutral Territory disputed by the United States and Spain in the early 1800s. Just off El Camino Real, the King's Highway, it drew steamboat landings, ferries, and Anglo-American settlers who knew it as Bevil's Crossing and then Hadden's Ferry. In time it even became a cradle of the region's pecan industry before its modern life as a resort lake.