Site of the Texas Home of Richard Ellis
New Boston, Bowie County, Texas
Marker Inscription
A Virginian by birth and education - Jurist and statesman of Alabama, 1813-1825 - Came to Texas, 1825 - President of the Constitutional Convention, March 1836, and member of the Congress of the Republic of Texas - Born February 14, 1781 - Died here December 20, 1846 Erected by the State of Texas 1936
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Virginia-born jurist Richard Ellis practiced law and served on the bench in Alabama before coming to Texas in 1825. In March 1836 he presided as president of the Convention that declared Texas independent from Mexico, then served in the Congress of the new Republic. He lived out his years at this Bowie County home, dying here in 1846.
Why it matters
As the man who chaired the convention that produced the Texas Declaration of Independence, Ellis stands at the founding moment of the Republic of Texas and its path toward American statehood.
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Related people
- ¡ Richard Ellis
Related events
- ¡ Convention of 1836
- ¡ Texas Declaration of Independence
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Bowie County
New Boston, TX
Carved from Red River County land in December 1840 and organized the next year, Bowie County honors James Bowie, the Long Expedition veteran who died defending the Alamo. The country had been home to agricultural Indians before 1800 and was charted for Anglo-American settlement in 1819, back when it was still frontier of the fledgling Texas Republic. Its county seat wandered among DeKalb, Old Boston, Texarkana, and Boston as railroads and farming, lumber, and manufacturing took hold.
Jones-Tyson House
New Boston, TX
When James W. and Laura Williams Jones built this home in 1883, they brought a piece of the Upper South with them â North Carolina architectural styling and garden plantings transplanted to the pinewoods of Bowie County. The house reflects the migration of settlers who carried regional tastes and traditions westward into Texas after the Civil War.
Dan LaFayette McDuffie
New Boston, TX
Dan LaFayette McDuffie came from a line of lawmen and pinned on his first badge at eighteen, learning the trade from an uncle who was Texarkana's police chief. Over three decades he served as county officer, railroad special agent, and Texas Ranger, winning fame in a 1923 amnesty that brought in 82 liquor stills. In 1931 he was cut down by gunfire in a kidnapping case â the last Ranger killed on duty during East Texas's lawless oil-boom years.
Pecan Point Signers of the Texas Declaration of Independence
Hooks, TX
In March 1836, as Texas declared its independence from Mexico, an unusually large share of the convention's leading delegates came from Pecan Point, a Red River settlement in this corner of far Northeast Texas. Richard Ellis presided over the gathering that produced the young republic's declaration and constitution, while neighbors like Collin McKinney, A. H. Latimer, Samuel Price Carson, and Robert Hamilton helped draft the document and staff the new government. That a single frontier vicinity supplied five prominent founders speaks to how thinly settled but politically ambitious early Anglo-Texas was.