Harrison County Historical Commission

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Harrison County Historical Commission The Commission identifies historic resources within the county and plans for the preservation of the county's historic and cultural resources.

10/11/2026

On this day in 1847, Texas gubernatorial candidate Isaac Van Zandt died of yellow fever. Van Zandt, born in Tennessee in 1813, moved to Texas in 1838 and is considered by many to be the founder of Marshall. In 1842 Sam Houston appointed him the Republic of Texas chargé d'affaires to the United States, in which capacity he worked for annexation. He was stricken while campaigning in Houston and was buried in Marshall; George T. Wood won the election. Yellow fever was a persistent threat in nineteenth-century Texas; there were at least nine epidemics of the disease in Galveston alone between 1839 and 1867. In one such outbreak, in 1853, approximately 60 percent of the city's residents became sick and more than 500 persons died. With dramatic improvements in sanitation and better control of the mosquito that carries the yellow fever virus, the disease receded.

09/09/2026

On this day in 1961, at 10:08 P.M., a fireball was seen passing northward through the sky just east of the Fort Worth-Dallas region. It hit the ground near Bells, Grayson County. Some ten ounces of a very rare carbonaceous chondrite was retrieved from the meteorite over a six-month period. Only about twenty ounces of this substance had been known previously to fall in the world. Texas has had at least nine cases of "falls"--meteorites recovered from a witnessed fireball. By an unusual coincidence, the fall near Bells was the second to occur in Northeast Texas within approximately 100 miles of each other and within a period of a little over 100 days. An 18-pound chondrite had fallen in a backyard near Marshall shortly before 10:30 P.M. on May 30, 1961.

08/16/2026

On this day in 1960, civil rights attorney Romeo Marcus Williams died when his car was struck by a railroad switching engine in Marshall. Williams was born on the outskirts of Marshall in 1919. An outstanding student, he attended Bishop College and was the first African-American to pass the Army Air Corps examination. He entered the Tuskegee Army Flying School in 1941. At Tuskegee Williams advanced to the rank of second lieutenant and received the Aviation Administration certificate. After the war Williams returned to civilian life determined to fight the injustice and prejudice he had encountered, especially during the war, by becoming a lawyer. Williams studied law in St. Louis, Missouri, obtained his legal credentials, and became a junior partner in the Dallas law firm of W. J. Durham. In 1956 Williams decided to return to Marshall and set up a private legal practice. He was the first lawyer called upon by students arrested in civil-rights demonstrations and sit-ins in Marshall. His accidental death in 1960 stunned the Marshall community, and the legal cases against the students were dismissed. Shortly thereafter Marshall's public facilities were desegregated. Notables from across Texas attended Williams's funeral at New Bethel Baptist Church in Marshall. Milton K. Curry, president of Bishop College, eulogized Williams as a man dedicated "to the cause of human dignity ... the struggle for freedom."

03/30/2026

On this day in 1849, the Marshall Texas Republican was established by Trenton A. and Frank J. Patillo. The paper is most closely identified with Robert W. Loughery, who became associate editor in July and editor in November, and two years later bought the paper outright. Under his fiery leadership, the Republican became one of the state's most articulate voices for secession, and his editorials were reprinted around the state. Loughery's support played an important role in the election of his fellow townsmen James Pinckney Henderson and Louis T. Wigfall to the United States Senate, and the Republican was among the staunchest supporters of the Confederacy during the war years. Once the war ended, however, Loughery vigorously advocated conciliation and compliance with the requirements of surrender, though he changed his stance after the imposition of congressional Reconstruction. His last great journalistic fight involved the Stockade Case at Jefferson, in which a number of citizens were held without formal charge and finally tried by a military tribunal. Loughery's complaints about the military's refusal to turn the case over to civilian courts or to release the prisoners on bail came to the attention of President Andrew Johnson, who asked for an explanation from Gen. Joseph J. Reynolds, commander of the troops in Texas. After the Republican ceased publication in 1872, Loughery went on to help found several other Texas newspapers. He died in 1894.

03/28/2026

On this day in 1893, Edmund Kirby Smith, former commander of the Trans-Mississippi Department of the Confederacy, died in Sewanee, Tennessee. The Florida native attended West Point, served in the Mexican War, and was an officer in the Second United States Cavalry on the frontier. He entered the Confederate service in 1861 and rose to the rank of lieutenant general in October 1862, when he was given command of the Trans-Mississippi Department, including Texas. His competent administration of the department, sometimes called "Kirby Smith's Confederacy," and successful defense of the region against Union general Nathaniel P. Banks's Red River campaign in 1864 were marred by his inability to cooperate amicably with his principal field commander, Gen. Richard Taylor. In February 1864 Smith was promoted to the rank of full general, and during this time he presided over the Marshall Conferences. Kirby Smith was almost the last Confederate general in the field, but in a hopelessly isolated situation he finally surrendered to Gen. Edward R. S. Canby in June 1865.

02/24/2026

On this day in 1969, approximately 100 Texas Rangers, local lawmen, and state police were dispatched to Wiley College, the oldest black college west of the Mississippi River, in response to a series of nonviolent student demonstrations on the Marshall campus. The students were demonstrating over faculty hiring practices, primitive dormitory facilities, and cutbacks in the intercollegiate athletic program. The lawmen undertook a massive search for concealed weapons in the dorms; the search was fruitless, but the school was closed down for several weeks. Further demonstrations resulted in the school administration's agreement in August to improve living conditions on campus. Wiley College was founded in 1873 and chartered in 1882. In 1907 Wiley received the first Carnegie college library west of the Mississippi. In 1960 Wiley and Bishop College students held sit-ins at the local Woolworth store. Their activities and the local reaction made national headlines. These demonstrations helped integrate public facilities in Marshall. In 2004, Wiley College had a student body of 552 and a faculty of 56, and Dr. Haywood Strickland was president.

02/18/2026

On this day in 1874, secessionist leader Louis T. Wigfall died in Galveston. The South Carolina native arrived in Texas in 1846 and settled in Nacogdoches, where he was a law partner of Thomas J. Jennings and William B. Ochiltree. Soon Wigfall opened his own law office in Marshall. He was active in Texas politics from the month he arrived, "alerting" Texans to the dangers of abolition and growing influence of non-slave states in the United States Congress. After serving in the Texas legislature Wigfall was elected to the U.S. senate in 1858, where he earned a reputation for eloquence, acerbic debate, and readiness for encounter. In the forefront of southern "fire-eaters," Wigfall continued his fight for slavery and states' rights and against expanding the power of national government. He played an important role in the formation of the Confederacy, and served in the Confederate congress. After the Civil War, Wigfall traveled to England, where he tried to foment war between Britain and the United States, hoping to give the South an opportunity to rise again. He returned to the United States in 1872, lived in Baltimore, and moved back to Texas shortly before his death.

02/12/2026

On this day in 1869, sixty-one men, women, and children died when the sidewheel steamboat Mittie Stephens caught fire on Caddo Lake during a run from New Orleans to Jefferson, Texas. The boat had been plying the New Orleans-Red River route since 1866. At that time Jefferson was the head of navigation via Caddo Lake due to the great log raft that obstructed traffic on the Red River. The Mittie Stephens had left New Orleans on February 5 with 107 passengers and crew and a cargo that included 274 bales of hay. On the night of the twelfth, a breeze blew a spark to the hay from the torch baskets that lighted the bows of the boat, and the resulting fire could not be contained. The boat headed for the shore, 300 yards away, but grounded in three feet of water near Swanson's Landing. The pilot and the engineer kept the wheels running in an attempt to force the boat to shore; the action of the wheels pulled the people struggling in the water into them and killed most of them. The Mittie Stephens burned to the water line, and parts of the wreck could be seen above the water until the early twentieth century. Jefferson remained the principal riverport of Texas until the logjam was removed in 1874.

01/18/2026

On this day in 1842, Marshall University was chartered with a grant of four leagues of land. The school, never a university except in name, opened that year, probably in September, with Virgil M. DuBose as its first president and Andrew Jackson Fowler as its first teacher. James M. Morphis took charge of the male department in 1849. The school was coeducational until 1850, when the female department was organized into a separate institution, Marshall Masonic Female Institute, which operated for more than fifty years. The university was absorbed by the public school system in 1910, after which the board of trustees continued to operate for a while.

01/10/2026

On this day in 1894, Charles A. (Doc) Dudley, an African American physician, civic leader, and civil rights worker, was born in Waskom, Texas. He graduated from high school at Marshall and attended Bishop College in Dallas before entering Meharry Medical College in Nashville, Tennessee. After receiving a license to practice medicine in Texas, he assumed the practice of his cousin in Victoria. Dudley supported education for black children and, working with teachers in Victoria, helped furnish equipment not provided by the school board. In January 1940 he organized a council composed of black citizens that provided improvements for the grounds of F. W. Gross High School. He led the fund raising drive that established the George Washington Carver Civic Council for the recreational and cultural development of black youth. During the struggle for voting rights, he worked closely with NAACP attorney Thurgood Marshall, the future United States Supreme Court associate justice. Dudley died in 1975. Dudley Elementary School in Victoria is named for him.

Address

200 W Houston Street
Marshall, TX
75670

Opening Hours

Tuesday 10am - 4pm
Wednesday 10am - 4pm
Thursday 10am - 4pm
Friday 10am - 4pm
Saturday 11am - 2pm

Telephone

+19039358417

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