Wise County Reunion
Decatur, Wise County, Texas
Marker Inscription
The Confederate veterans of Wise County are said to have held occasional reunions in the 1860s-1870s. Old settlers invited both the Confederate veterans and Wise County pioneers to an 1881 reunion at Cold Springs. This was on July 12, the anniversary of Captain George Stevens' victory over hostile Indians in 1874. About 5,000 people attended the 1881 reunion. The "Wise County Messenger" reported a successful day -"only the music being a failure". Events included speeches and picnicking. The reunion began to occupy the present site in 1896. By 1900 it extended to three days - honoring old settlers on the first, the veterans on the second, and daughters and sons of Confederates on the third. Sometimes 12,000 would attend, parading from courthouse to camp ground. Programs included candidates' speeches, rodeos, and sham battles. Evenings were devoted to visiting. In 1909, the grounds were leased for 25 years. Later, campsites were leased and improved by participants. The Wise County Old Settlers Association, formed in 1904, sponsored a 1907 Pioneer History by C. D. Cates. Extended to a week, with visiting in daytime and stated events in the evenings, this reunion is now the oldest recurring public event in the county. (1976)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Confederate veterans and Wise County pioneers gathered for an 1881 reunion at Cold Springs, timed to the anniversary of Captain George Stevens' 1874 victory over raiding Indians; some 5,000 people came. Settling into its present grounds by 1896, the gathering grew to a multi-day festival of speeches, rodeos, and sham battles drawing crowds of 12,000. Sponsored by the Old Settlers Association, it endures as the oldest recurring public event in the county.
Why it matters
The reunion shows how post–Civil War Texas communities wove together Confederate memory and frontier-settlement pride into a lasting civic ritual.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · George Stevens
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Robert Calvin Mount
Chico, TX
Robert Calvin Mount came from Tennessee to Texas in 1855 and helped organize the brand-new Wise County, winning election as its first tax assessor-collector in 1856. During the Civil War he served as a first lieutenant in Blythe's militia, and in 1874 he built a fort-like rock house near Chico as protection on a still-dangerous frontier. He is remembered as one of the county's founding pioneers.
Dido Cemetery
Dido, TX
Settlement here began in 1848, and by 1887 landowner Dempsey S. Holt had donated three acres for a school, church, and cemetery, with a Confederate veteran and pioneer physician later adding more. The little village took the whimsical name Dido, after the mythological Queen of Carthage, and thrived with a post office and stores until the railroad passed it by in the 1890s. Around a thousand graves remain, holding many of the area's founding families.
Forester Ranch
Sanger, TX
William S. Forester drove his family from Tennessee to the Denton County frontier in the early 1850s and carved out a ranch on open range still contested with Native peoples, a danger that cost his teenage son Sol his life while herding cattle. His son Lock, a Confederate veteran, expanded the spread past 6,000 acres and made its "Two I Jinglebob" brand well known, before a third generation carried the ranch into the twentieth century. For over a century the Forester Ranch shaped the cattle country of North Texas.
Perryman Cemetery
Forestburg, TX
The oldest marked grave in this Montague County burial ground belongs to an infant who died in 1862, and its early plots read like a chronicle of frontier hardship: a well-digger killed in an 1863 Indian raid, and two former Confederate soldiers who had been captured at Lookout Mountain. In 1883 Levi Perryman — himself a Confederate veteran, Indian fighter, and sheriff — bought the site and deeded it to the county. Still in use, the cemetery keeps the memory of the district's pioneers.