The Historic Persimmon Grove and Capt. Hill's Military Camp
Petty, Lamar County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Up to 1860, pioneers found here a grand 100-square-mile prairie overgrown with high grass. The grove of persimmons 100 yards west of this spot formed an island on the north-central edge of the prairie. The locality's only trees, the persimmon grove was a gathering place where settlers swapped news or livestock and followed other casual pursuits. When Texas and other states seceded from the Union and prepared for war, Lamar Cavalry Company No. 2 was organized here on June 10, 1861, by Methodist lay minister and Mexican war veteran James Hill (1827-90). Capt. Hill drilled his men for several months on the prairie beside the grove. Then it became known that militia laws would forbid such cavalry units to leave the state of Texas. Disbanding, Hill's men formed Company E, 9th Regiment, Texas Infantry, and were mustered into Confederate service on Nov. 26, 1861. In Ector's Brigade, French's Division, army of Lieutenant General Polk, they fought at Shiloh, Murfreesboro, Chickamauga, and other actions. Farmers later plowed up the prairie and planted trees that obscured the persimmon grove. Yet is has become a landmark of pioneer days.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Before the Civil War, a lone grove of persimmons stood as the only trees on a hundred-square-mile Texas prairie, a natural gathering spot where settlers swapped news and livestock. When secession came in 1861, Methodist lay minister and Mexican War veteran James Hill organized a cavalry company here and drilled his men beside the grove. When militia law barred the unit from leaving Texas, they reorganized as Company E of the 9th Texas Infantry and went on to fight at Shiloh, Murfreesboro, and Chickamauga.
Why it matters
The grove captures how ordinary frontier communities mustered for the Confederacy, sending prairie farmers into some of the war's bloodiest western battles.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · James Hill
Related events
- · Battle of Shiloh
- · Battle of Chickamauga
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Old Cemetery of Paris
Paris, TX
On land once owned by George Washington Wright, founder of Paris, this was the town's primary burial ground from 1845 to 1865, its oldest grave said to be that of a free Black man who worked for Wright. When the newer Evergreen Cemetery opened in 1866, many graves were moved, yet Wright himself was buried here in 1877, and a granite marker honors soldiers of the 9th Texas Infantry, C.S.A., who died in a measles epidemic in 1862. Of roughly 325 graves, about a hundred stones survive, most from 1870 to 1910.
Leroy Nelson DeWitt, Pioneer Citizen
Mount Joy, TX
Born in Virginia in 1840, Leroy Nelson DeWitt came to this corner of North Texas with his parents in 1854 and put down deep roots as a merchant and farmer. He married Mary Collier in 1861 and, the next year, joined the Confederacy to serve on the frontier through the end of the Civil War. Afterward he became a recognized leader in the area's civic, church, and business affairs until his death in 1918.
Thomas Wilson Stegall
Lake Creek, TX
Thomas Wilson Stegall was born in North Carolina in 1832, served as a Confederate private late in the Civil War, and moved his large family through Tennessee and Mississippi before settling in Delta County, Texas, in 1873. A Baptist preacher remembered for his kindness—he once cut a gap in his prized rose hedge just to give a neighbor a shortcut—he built a blacksmith shop that became the gathering place at the heart of the new town of Lake Creek. From that community nucleus a town grew.
New Salem Cemetery
Honey Grove, TX
Settlers reached this Fannin County area in the mid-1840s, among them Philip Greenleaf Williams, who built a water-powered gristmill near Bois D'Arc Springs. When he drowned in the Red River in 1848 while bringing his family from Virginia, they buried him here beside a child said to already rest at the spot—his stone bears the cemetery's earliest date. The grave markers of the Self family, for whom the community was named, and many other pioneer households fill the burial ground.