Terry County
Brownfield, Terry County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Formed from Young and Bexar territories; created August 21, 1876, organized June 28, 1904. Named in honor of Colonel Benjamin Franklin Terry 1821-1861. Leader of the famous Terry's Texas Rangers. Brownfield, the county seat primarily a farming area.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Carved from Young and Bexar territories and created in 1876, Terry County was not formally organized until 1904, when settlers finally arrived in numbers to work its farmland. It honors Colonel Benjamin Franklin Terry, the planter who raised the celebrated Terry's Texas Rangers cavalry regiment and fell early in the Civil War in 1861. Brownfield became its county seat at the heart of this farming country.
Why it matters
The county's naming ties the settlement of the West Texas plains to the Confederate cavalry tradition, a reminder of how Civil War memory was written directly onto the map of frontier Texas.
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Related people
- · Benjamin Franklin Terry
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Lubbock County
Lubbock, TX
Created in 1876 and organized in 1891, Lubbock County honors Colonel Thomas S. Lubbock (1817-1862), a soldier of the Texas Revolution and Republic. Lubbock marched with the New Orleans Greys at the storming of Bexar, joined the ill-fated Santa Fe and Somervell expeditions, and in 1861 helped organize the famous Terry's Texas Rangers before his death. The county he named became the anchor of the South Plains.
Buffalo Soldier Tragedy of 1877 in Lynn County
Tahoka, TX
After the Civil War, African American "Buffalo Soldiers" patrolled the western frontier, and in July 1877 Company A of the 10th Cavalry set out from Double Lake in pursuit of a Comanche party. The Comanche drew the troopers away from water, and the soldiers endured extreme heat and 86 hours without water; horses and mules died and men became lost searching for springs. Four soldiers died on the expedition, including Pvt. John T. Gordon, buried at Double Lakes.
Terry County's First Jail
Brownfield, TX
Terry County had no jail at all until 1916, twelve years after it organized, when this small frame structure with two steel cells went up on the courthouse square. A new courthouse jail replaced it in 1926, and the little building passed to farmer A. T. Fowler, who moved it to his land and plastered its walls for storage. Donated to the Terry County Heritage Museum in 1974, it was relocated and restored on this site.
A. M. Brownfield Home
Brownfield, TX
A. M. Brownfield arrived in newly settled Terry County as a rancher in 1900 and helped anchor the community that took his family's name, organizing the Brownfield State Bank in 1905. In 1928 he built this Spanish Colonial–style residence of concrete and clay, deliberately fireproofed after an earlier family home burned in 1915. The house was designated a Recorded Texas Historic Landmark in 1985.