The Turner House
Marshall, Harrison County, Texas
Marker Inscription
George Gammon Gregg, a leading merchant, built this frame house during the early 1850s. According to family tradition, Confederate veteran James Turner (d. 1913) acquired title to the property after a poker game in 1866. Turner was a noted lawyer and served four years as mayor of Marshall. His son Robert (1868-1927) added the front porch, with its Victorian columns, in 1890. Members of the Turner family owned the residence for over 100 years. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1979
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Merchant George Gammon Gregg built this frame house in Marshall in the early 1850s, and family tradition holds that Confederate veteran James Turner won title to it in an 1866 poker game. Turner went on to become a noted lawyer and served four years as the town's mayor, while his son Robert added the Victorian porch columns in 1890. The Turner family kept the residence for more than a century.
Why it matters
The house ties an East Texas town to the postwar generation of Confederate veterans who rebuilt civic and professional life after the Civil War.
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Related people
- · James Turner
- · George Gammon Gregg
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Confederate Capitol of Missouri
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During the Civil War, this Marshall site sheltered the exiled Confederate government of Missouri, whose Union-held statehouse left its Confederate officials without a capital. From a modest one-story frame house, Governor Thomas C. Reynolds directed the civil and military affairs of Confederate Missourians from late 1863 until the war's end in 1865. The governor lived in a small cottage that once stood just across the street.
Marshall
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Marshall was founded around 1841 after landowner Peter Whetstone offered land for a courthouse, church, and school, and representative Isaac Van Zandt named it for U.S. Chief Justice John Marshall. By 1850 it ranked among the wealthiest towns in East Texas. During the Civil War it was a major Confederate stronghold, home to the exiled Missouri state government and the postal headquarters of the Trans-Mississippi Department; afterward it hosted a Freedmen's Bureau office and, with the arrival of the Texas and Pacific Railway, became a regional education center anchored by Wiley and Bishop colleges.
James Harper Starr
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Connecticut-born physician James Harper Starr came to Texas in 1837 and served the Republic as Secretary of the Treasury and army surgeon. During the Civil War he took on the daunting job of Postmaster General for the Confederacy's western states after federal control of the Mississippi split the South in two—improvising mail routes by pony express, wagon, blockade-runner, and courier to keep soldiers and families connected across enemy lines. After the war he examined East Texas oil showings and founded Marshall's first bank.
Home Town of Texas Confederate General Elkanah Greer
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Elkanah Greer came to Texas in 1848 after fighting in the Mexican War, settled at Marshall, and at the outbreak of the Civil War raised and led the 3rd Texas Cavalry. Recalled as a brigadier general in 1862, he ran the Confederacy's conscription bureau west of the Mississippi and organized labor and reserves to defend the Texas coast. A member of the Knights of the Golden Circle, he died in 1877 and is buried in Memphis.