Historic Walker County

Thank you for your interest in this HPNbooks publication. 

For more information about other HPNbooks publications, or information about 

producing your own book with us, please visit www.hpnbooks.com.

HISTORIC WALKER COUNTY 

The Story of Huntsville & Walker County 

Edited by Jeffrey L. Littlejohn 

A publication of the Huntsville-Walker County Chamber of Commerce 

HPNbooks 

A division of Lammert Incorporated 

San Antonio, Texas

CONTENTS 

3 CHAPTER I Native Americans and American Pioneers, 

Prehistory to 1846 

9 CHAPTER II An Era of Growth, 1846-1860 

15 CHAPTER III From Civil War to Reconstruction, 1860-1872 

21 CHAPTER IV Railroad Towns and Sam Houston Normal Institute, 

1872-1900 

27 CHAPTER V Progress and the Dawn of a New Century, 1900-1929 

33 CHAPTER VI From the Great Depression to World War II, 1930-1945 

41 CHAPTER VII A Trying Time, 1945-68 

47 CHAPTER VIII Huntsville and Walker County, 1968-Present 

55 ENDNOTES 

59 SHARING THE HERITAGE 

First Edition 

Copyright © 2012 Historical Publishing Network 

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, without permission in writing 

from the publisher. All inquiries should be addressed to Historical Publishing Network, 11535 Galm Road, Suite 101, San Antonio, Texas, 78254. Phone (800) 749-9790. 

ISBN: 978-1-939300-00-3 

Library of Congress Card Catalog Number: 2012952080 

Historic Walker County: The Story of Huntsville & Walker County 

editor: Jeffrey L. Littlejohn 

writers: Meredith A. Miller Austin, Carolyn A. Carroll, Amy Hyden, 

Anthony Lane, Jeffrey L. Littlejohn, Sharla Miles, 

Patricia Staniszewski-Hale, Gonzalo Tamez 

contributing writer for sharing the heritage: Garnette Bane 

Historical Publishing Network 

president: Ron Lammert 

project manager: Curtis Courtney 

administration: Donna M. Mata, Melissa G. Quinn 

book sales: Dee Steidle 

production: Colin Hart, Evelyn Hart, Glenda Tarazon Krouse, 

Omar Wright, Tony Quinn 

2 ✦ H I S T O R I C W A L K E R C O U N T Y

C H A P T E R 

NATIVE AMERICANS AND AMERICAN 

PIONEERS, PREHISTORY TO 1846 

B Y J E F F R E Y L . L I T T L E J O H N 

I 

T H E L A N D S C A P E A N D N A T I V E P O P U L A T I O N 

Walker County is a scenic, sprawling territory of 801 square miles located in the southeastern region 

of Texas. Situated along the edge of the Coastal Plain, the county lies roughly one hundred miles north 

of the Gulf of Mexico and midway between the Louisiana state line and the Texas capital at Austin. The 

local landscape is beautiful and rustic, with rolling hills, open prairies, and piney woods. The north and 

eastern sections of the county are drained by the Trinity River and its tributaries, including Bedias, 

Nelson, Harmon, and Caroline creeks. In the southwestern section of the county, the San Jacinto River 

carries water from Mill, West Sandy, East Sandy, and Robinson creeks due south to the Gulf of Mexico. 1 

Despite its popular image as part of the Texas frontier, Walker County boasts an ancient history. The 

first inhabitants of the area arrived during the Paleo-Indian period before 7000 BCE. Archeological finds 

in Walker, Montgomery, and Polk Counties suggest that early native peoples lived in small mobile bands 

that moved through broad geographical zones to hunt, fish, and forage for food. During the Archaic Period 

from 7000 BCE to 100 CE, Native American groups became larger and returned to hunting sites 

repeatedly, leaving clearly discernible projectile points in each hunting zone they inhabited. These trends 

toward complexity and distinctiveness continued during the Late Prehistoric period from 100 CE to 1600 

CE, as Native American populations in the Walker County area participated in a regional phenomenon 

that archeologist Dee Ann Story termed the “Mossy Grove tradition.” This set of cultural patterns linked 

“a number of ethnically distinct groups in southeast and east Texas,” including the Atakapa, Akokisa and 

❖ 

Huntsville State Park’s Lake Raven in 

the mist, December 2009. 

COURTESY OF ALEXEY SERGEEV. 

C h a p t e r I ✦ 3

❖ 

Above: William E. Moore found these 

Kent type projectile points dating 

from 2000 BCE to 500 CE in 

Walker County. 

COURTESY OF R. T. SINGLETON PHOTOGRAPHY. 

Below: Detail showing the homeland 

of the Cenis and Bidai Indians from 

Carte de la Louisiane et du cours 

du Mississipi (1718), by Guillaume 

de L’Isle. 

COURTESY OF THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

Bidai. These groups exhibited important “unifying 

traits such as an egalitarian social organization, 

hunter-gatherer subsistence orientation, and use of 

plain sandy paste ceramics.” 2 

The Cenis or Hasinai Indians were the earliest 

recorded native inhabitants in the Walker County 

region. The Cenis lived primarily on the eastern 

side of the Trinity River in modern day San 

Jacinto, Trinity, and Houston counties. 

Nevertheless, they had villages on the Trinity 

River and moved frequently through the Walker 

County region to hunt and trade. One early 

French explorer, Father Anastase Douay, reported 

that the Cenis lived in large villages with fine 

homes shaped like beehives. Douay also wrote 

that the Cenis traded widely with western Indians 

and had a well-appointed collection of trade 

goods including metal coins, silver spoons, and 

Spanish horses. Although the Cenis never made 

their principal point of residence in Walker 

County, they exercised an important cultural 

influence over the area until their demise at the 

end of the eighteenth century. 3 

A second and smaller group of local Indians, 

the Bidai, were first recorded in 1691. As a semisedentary 

group, the Bidai moved between the 

Gulf Coast and the Camino Real, a historic road 

just north of Bedias Creek connecting San Antonio 

with Natchitoches in Louisiana. The Bidai raised 

corn and other crops and depended on the hunt 

for a large proportion of their diet. They apparently 

spoke the Caddoan language—their name was 

derived from the Caddo word for “brushwood”— 

but they also spoke a language of their own. The 

Bidai were reported to be “a peaceable, quiet people” 

who were known for their “excellent character…honesty 

and punctuality.” 4 

E U R O P E A N 

A N D 

E X P L O R A T I O N 

E M P I R E 

In the sixteenth century, Spanish conquistadors 

entered Texas seeking to extend the reach of their 

new Atlantic empire. Cabeza de Vaca, one of the 

lone survivors of the disastrous expedition led by 

Pánfilo de Narváez, became the first Spanish 

explorer to travel through East Texas. Although de 

Vaca did not reach modern-day Walker County, 

the remnants of Hernando de Soto’s later expedition 

may have come close to the area in 1542 

under the leadership of Luis de Moscoso Alvarado. 

Moscoso’s group probably visited the homeland of 

the Cenis Indians in neighboring Houston County, 

where they found trade items such as turquoise 


❖ 

Left: A Native American burial site 

and skeleton was discovered at the 

Rafter S Ranch by Robert Samuel in 

June 1956. Later, two additional 

skeletons were uncovered at the same 

location. The remains were analyzed 

by Dr. T. N. Campbell, a University 

of Texas anthropologist, who found 

them to be representative of the 

Bedias tribe. Pictured here is 

Chief Cooper Sylestine unveiling the 

tomb as part of a local program on 

the discovery. 

COURTESY OF THE WALKER COUNTY 

HISTORICAL COMMISSION. 

Below: The Route of René Robert 

Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle in Texas. 

and cotton goods, testifying to the far reaching 

trade networks of the indigenous people. 5 

Following Moscoso’s expedition, it took more 

than 140 years for Europeans to return to the 

Walker County area. Although the entire region 

was claimed by the Spanish monarch, French 

explorers under the command of René Robert 

Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle traveled into the area in 

1686-87. Seeking to establish a French colony at 

the mouth of the Mississippi River, La Salle 

mistakenly landed near Garcitas Creek just north 

of Matagorda Bay. Forced by necessity to establish 

a fort, La Salle and a contingent of his men then 

explored the area to the east before a 

disenchanted follower, Pierre Duhaut, killed La 

Salle on March 19, 1687. Although accounts 

differ on the route of La Salle’s expedition and the 

site of his death, it seems clear that either he or his 

men traveled through the Walker County area in 

hopes of finding the Mississippi River. It is also 

clear that La Salle’s expedition gave France a claim 

to the territory in East Texas and caused the 

Viceroy of New Spain to send Alonso De León 

with a military company to secure the area in 

1689. In turn, De León and chaplain Damián 

Massanet built the first Spanish mission in East 

Texas, San Francisco de los Tejas, about 70 miles 

northeast of Walker County near the present-day 

site of Augusta, Texas. 6 C h a p t e r I ✦ 5

Eight decades later, following a disastrous 

economic recession, King Carlos III of Spain 

issued a royal order known as the New 

Regulations for Presidios. This 1772 directive 

was intended to strengthen the Spanish defensive 

perimeter, while cutting costs and eliminating 

waste. It called for the abandonment of all 

missions and presidios in Texas—except those 

at San Antonio and La Bahia—and the removal 

of soldiers and settlers from East Texas. 

Despite this new order, however, settlers 

from East Texas persuaded the Spanish Viceroy, 

Antonio María de Bucareli y Ursúa, to permit 

them to return to the region in 1774. Once 

there, they established a settlement named 

Nuestra Señora del Pilar de Bucareli at the intersection 

of the Old San Antonio Road and the 

Trinity River. This settlement, which most likely 

sat at the modern day site of Robbins Ferry 

northeast of Midway, was within the original 

1846 borders of Walker County. By the time 

Walker County was established, however, 

Bucareli had long been abandoned. In 1779, 

after a series of epidemics and Comanche raids, 

Antonio Gil Ibarvo led the Bucareli settlers further 

east, where they established Nacogdoches. 

Even so, the Bucareli site is an important historic 

location and signifies the intent of Spanish 

settlers to remain in Texas, even as their king 

called for them to move southward toward 

Mexico City. 7 

❖ 

Top: Pleasant and Hannah Gray 

signed a deed granting the people of 

Walker County ownership of the 

Huntsville public square in 1846. 

COURTESY OF THE HUNTSVILLE 

ARTS COMMISSION. 

Middle: Alexander McDonald built 

one of the first brick buildings in 

Huntsville in 1843. 



Bottom: A sketch of Huntsville (1843) 

from William Bollaert’s Texas. 




A N G L O - A M E R I C A N S A R R I V E 

A N D T E X A S J O I N S T H E 

U N I T E D S T A T E S 

In 1821, after years of protest, Mexican 

forces finally won independence from Spain, 

and Texas became part of the new Mexican 

nation. Three years after independence, 

Mexican leaders established a constitutional 

republic and encouraged settlers to move into 

the nation’s northernmost territory, Coahuila 

and Texas. 

❖ 

Left: Huntsville’s first citizens founded 

an academy for their children 

around 1840. 



Below: A map of Walker County from 

1858, showing original land grants. 

COURTESY OF THE TEXAS GENERAL LAND 

OFFICE, AUSTIN. 

C h a p t e r I ✦ 7

❖ 

Cincinnati town survey. 

COURTESY OF THEWALKER COUNTY 


In the early 1830s, Pleasant Gray, 

an adventurous Anglo explorer from 

Huntsville, Alabama, moved to Texas 

to take advantage of Mexico’s liberal 

empresario system, which granted 

hundreds of acres of land to anyone 

willing to homestead in Texas. On July 

12, 1835, Mexican officials granted 

Gray a patent for one league of land a 

few miles southwest of the Trinity 

River. Gray worked with his wife 

Hannah and brother Ephraim to build 

a home on his new land, and he 

quickly opened trade with the local 

Bidai and Alabama-Coushatta Indians. 

Soon, he was joined by other Anglo 

migrants, including Thomas P. Carson, 

who built a blacksmith shop near 

Gray’s burgeoning trading post. With 

the growth of his settlement, Gray 

decided to bestow a name on his new 

community, calling it Huntsville in 

honor of his former home in Alabama. 8 

Following the War for Texas 

Independence in 1836, Gray’s settlement 

at Huntsville became part of 

Washington and later Montgomery 

County in the new Republic of Texas. 

As the local population grew, 

Huntsville took on a life and character 

of its own. The Globe Tavern, a frame building 

that served as an inn and stage coach shop, 

appeared in 1841. Two years later merchant 

Alexander McDonald constructed a store and 

Masonic lodge. The same community spirit that 

inspired the Masons also helped finance the 

construction of the area’s first school—the 

“Brick Academy”—which provided education to 

boys and, later, girls from the surrounding area. 9 

As Huntsville residents watched the slow but 

steady growth of their community, another 

Anglo migrant, James DeWitt, established a 

nearby settlement called Cincinnati in 1837. 

With its commanding presence on the Trinity 

River near a stage road connecting Washingtonon-the-Brazos 

and Nacogdoches, Cincinnati 

soon became one of the area’s leading 

commercial centers. Local farmers transported 

cotton and other goods to Cincinnati, and then 

steamboats carried the goods down the Trinity 

River to the port at Galveston. By the 1850s, 

Cincinnati boasted “a saloon, a grocery store, a 

cotton warehouse, a dry-goods store, a saddlery, 

a tannery, a cotton gin, a blacksmith shop, a 

wagon-maker, a stonemason, and two doctors.” 10 

Cincinnati’s growth paralleled that in other 

parts of Texas, and American leaders in 

Washington, D.C., took note. In 1845, the 

United States annexed the Republic of Texas, 

making it the 28th state to join the Union. Then, 

a year later, the Texas legislature established 

Walker County as an independent entity with a 

county seat in Huntsville. The county was initially 

named for Robert J. Walker, a U.S. Senator 

from Mississippi who championed recognition 

of the Republic of Texas and annexation of the 

state. Ironically, Walker’s Unionist sympathies 

during the Civil War caused local residents to 

request that the Texas Confederate legislature 

rename the county in honor of Samuel H. 

Walker, a Texas Ranger and Indian fighter who 

died at the Battle of Huamantla in 1847. 11 


C H A P T E R 

AN ERA OF GROWTH, 1846-1860 

B Y J E F F R E Y L . L I T T L E J O H N A N D A N T H O N Y L A N E 

I I 

N E W S E T T L E M E N T S E M E R G E 

As Walker County developed during the antebellum era, hundreds of Anglo Americans 

migrated to the region looking for land and a chance to improve their lot in life. Coming 

primarily from the southern United States, many Anglo pioneers brought enslaved African 

Americans with them. Together, these two groups drove a population boom, which saw the county’s 

residential numbers grow from 3,964 in 1850 to 8,191 in 1860. This dramatic demographic 

expansion was accompanied by other corresponding signs of development, including a 213 percent 

rise in improved farmland, a 207 percent rise in corn production, and a 1,272 percent rise in 

cotton production. 12 

During this era of growth, Walker County’s local officials helped establish order in the 

frontier communities taking shape in the area. The county’s first administrators included Milton Estill 

as chief justice, Isaac McGary as county clerk, and William Reeves as sheriff. These officials worked 

with the county’s four commissioners to develop a budget, determine tax rates, and provide for 

road construction. 

Indeed, the size and scale of Texas created transportation challenges throughout the antebellum 

period. Many roads were little more that dirt paths cut through forest glens or across rolling prairies. 

When it rained in the spring, muddy conditions brought travel and trade to a standstill. And, moving 

by stagecoach proved tiring and expensive. 

These transportation difficulties meant that many river towns grew up on navigable waterways 

that penetrated into the Texas interior. One of the earliest of these sites, Carolina, developed at the 

❖ 

A cotton plant, the basis of Walker 

County’s early economic development. 

FROM THE EDITOR’S COLLECTION. 

C h a p t e r I I ✦ 9

❖ 

Advertisements from The 

Huntsville Item. 

COURTESY OF THE HUNTSVILLE ITEM. 

mouth of Caroline Creek on the western bank of 

the Trinity River. Founded in the early 1830s, 

this settlement in northeastern Walker County 

offered numerous iron and sulfur springs and 

served as a rest stop for steamboats on the Trinity 

River. Despite its advantageous location and 

beneficent springs, however, Carolina never had 

a population of more than three dozen people. 13 

Another Trinity River settlement, Wyser’s 

Bluff, grew up in 1853, as people fled a yellow 

fever epidemic in the neighboring town of 

Cincinnati. Named initially for landowner 

Gustavus A. Wyser, this settlement was later 

renamed Osceola for John C. Calhoun’s 

plantation in South Carolina, before residents 

finally decided on Tuscaloosa in honor of the 

Alabama town from which many of the migrants 

had come. Located twelve miles north of 

Huntsville, Tuscaloosa had a natural landing for 

steamboats and served as a commercial center 

for local farmers throughout the 1850s. 14 

Much the same can be said about Joseph 

Werner’s settlement of Newport. Established in 

1854, this Trinity River port enjoyed a brief 

heyday in the years before the Civil War as 

cotton farmers shipped their produce downriver 

to Galveston and the Gulf of Mexico. 15 

1 0 ✦ H I S T O R I C W A L K E R C O U N T Y

Despite the natural advantages these river 

ports offered, many migrants to Walker County 

settled near prominent local figures who lived a 

safe distance from the Trinity River and its trade 

routes. For instance, some people sought 

out Hillary M. Crabb, a large landowner 

who served as both chief justice of Walker 

County (1848-52) and a state representative 

to the Texas legislature (1853-57). His 

homestead at Crabb’s Prairie, a few miles 

northwest of Huntsville, grew into a substantial 

agricultural community and attracted a number 

of pioneer families. 16 

Shepherd’s Valley, a settlement seven miles 

southeast of Huntsville, provides another 

example of the role that large landowners played 

in the creation of local communities. Named for 

Jacob H. Shepherd, a soldier who served in the 

Texas Revolution and received a league of land 

for his participation in the conflict, Shepherd’s 

Valley grew up in the 1850s. It soon had a 

number of prominent local residents, who 

contributed to the economic and intellectual 

development of the county. 17 

Few settlers in Walker County could rival the 

wealth and power that was accumulated in 

Waverly or Old Waverly as it is sometimes 

called. Founded by James W. Winters, a migrant 

who moved to southeastern Walker County 

from Alabama in 1835, Waverly hit a growth 

spurt in the early 1850s. First, the Fisher family 

arrived from North Carolina in 1851, and then 

the following year some three hundred people 

moved in from Alabama with dozens of African 

American slaves. 

The local inhabitants farmed cotton and built 

a school, the Waverly Institute, for their children. 

Soon, the town had a Methodist, Presbyterian, 

and Episcopalian congregation, as well as a 

Masonic Lodge. Indeed, after the Civil War, local 

planters formed the Waverly Emigration Society 

and employed Meyer Levy, a merchant of Polish 

origins, to secure 150 Polish laborers to replace 

the African-American slaves who had recently 

been freed. Meyer accomplished his task, and in 

1867 approximately 40 Polish families arrived in 

the area. Waverly then became associated with a 

rich Polish culture that can still be seen today 

at sites like St. Joseph’s Catholic Church, 

which had its origins in the work of Reverend 

❖ 

Top: Descendants of Joseph Werner, 

the founder of Newport, photographed 

in 1899. 



Middle: St. Joseph’s Catholic Church. 



Bottom: A map of river stops along 

the Trinity River. 



Felix Orzechowski. 18 C h a p t e r I I ✦ 1 1

❖ 

Above: Sam Houston (1793-1863). 

Daguerreotype by Charles Fredricks. 

COURTESY OF THE SAM HOUSTON 

MEMORIAL MUSEUM. 

Below: Margaret Moffette Lea 

(1819-1867). 



H U N T S V I L L E A N D 

S A M H O U S T O N 

As new settlements emerged in Walker 

County, the local seat at Huntsville grew at a fast 

clip. Thomas and Sandford Gibbs ran a 

mercantile store and operated a private bank 

that helped fund the development of the county. 

Robert Goodloe Smither acted as a merchant 

and local booster, raising funds and promoting 

new institutions in the area. Soon, there was a 

local newspaper called the Huntsville Item, and a 

half-dozen churches were in operation 

throughout the city. The Cumberland 

Presbyterians built the first church in town in 

1848, and seven years later the Old School 

Presbyterians constructed a building of their 

own. Then, in quick succession, the Baptists 

(1852), Christians (1854), Methodists (1857), 

and Episcopalians (1871) established churches 

for their own Sunday services. 19 

The development of Walker County received 

a further boost in 1844, when General Sam 

Houston, the hero of San Jacinto and first 

President of the Republic of Texas, established 

his Raven Hill plantation fourteen miles 

northeast of Huntsville. Three years later, while 

serving as a U.S. Senator in Washington D.C., 

Houston had a new “Woodland Home” built in 

Huntsville for his wife, Margaret, and their 

growing family. The Houstons lived in their new 

home from 1847 to 1858, and Margaret even 

convinced her husband to join the Baptist 

Church during their time in Huntsville. 

Sam Houston’s move to Walker County 

brought other prominent people to the 

community as well. For instance, Sarah 

Williams Kittrell Goree, the matron of honor at 

Margaret and Sam Houston’s wedding, moved to 

Huntsville with her husband Langston Goree 

and children in December 1850. The Gorees 

also brought Dr. Pleasant Williams Kittrell and 

his wife with them as well. Together, the Gorees 

and Kittrells transported a train of wagons, 

herds of livestock, and dozens of enslaved 

African Americans to Walker County. The two 

families briefly lived in the Houston’s Woodland 

Home, while their houses were built in the area 

known as the Kittrell Cutoff. Dr. Kittrell 

practiced medicine in Huntsville, served two 

terms in the Texas legislature, and chaired the 

Education Committee that authored the bill to 

establish the University of Texas. 20 

Another of Houston’s colleagues, Henderson 

Yoakum, moved to the Huntsville area in 1845 

and began practicing law with his friend and 

partner, Anthony Martin Branch. Yoakum was 

elected district attorney for the Seventh Judicial 

District in 1850 and then to the Texas House in 


1859. He also published a landmark History of 

Texas that shaped the way people saw the state 

for generations to come. 21 

With the arrival of so many bright and 

prosperous people, it was not long before local 

residents decided to establish a new institution 

of higher education in Huntsville. Daniel Baker, 

a Princeton-educated Presbyterian missionary, 

lobbied for the establishment of a churchaffiliated 

school, and community leaders raised 

$10,000 to support the founding of Austin 

College in 1849. Reverend Samuel McKinney 

assumed the presidency of Austin College, and 

the school admitted its first class in the fall of 

1850. Students at the college studied law, 

optics, electricity, mineralogy, philosophy, 

poetry, and rhetoric. After McKinney resigned in 

1853, Daniel Baker was selected as the new 

president, and the school reached its peak 

attendance in 1855. The Civil War and a later 

yellow fever epidemic led to the college’s 

relocation to Sherman, Texas. Yet, the original 

building still resides on the campus of Sam 

Houston State University today. 22 

In 1853 the Texas Conference of Methodist 

Churches opened its own school, Andrew Female 

College, in Huntsville. James M. Follansbee 

worked as the first principal of the institution, 

which provided young women with a classical 

education and classes in music, art, and domestic 

life. Charles Keenan, Henderson Yoakum, and 

Daniel Baker served as the original trustees, and 

Tom H. Ball was an early president of the school. 

The college closed in 1879, and the leaders of 

Huntsville transferred the building to the black 

community where it served as a local school. 23 

Although Austin College and Andrew Female 

College survived only a short time, the Texas 

State Penitentiary has enjoyed a longer tenure in 

Walker County. Established in 1848 and opened 

the following year, the penitentiary has been in 

operation for more than 160 years. It is locally 

❖ 

Left: Langston and Sarah Williams 

Kittrell Goree family, including six 

children photographed here (from 

left to right): Susan Margaret, 

Pleasant Kittrell, Edwin King, 

Langston James, Jr., Robert Daniel, 

and Thomas Jewett. 



Above: Henderson Yoakum 

(1810-1856). 



Below: Andrew Female College 

letterhead. 



C h a p t e r I I ✦ 1 3

❖ 

Above: “A typical Texas cotton 

field at picking time,” Keystone 

View Company. 

FROM THE EDITOR’S COLLECTION. 

Right: Jim and John “Tip” Hightower. 

COURTESY SAMUEL WALKER HOUSTON MUSEUM 

AND CULTURAL CENTER. 

known as the Walls Unit and sits only a few 

blocks off the town square behind the modern 

headquarters of the Texas Criminal Justice 

System. Leading local figures including John 

Slater Besser and Thomas Jewett Goree worked 

as administrators with the prison system in the 

mid-nineteenth century, and hundreds of local 

residents are employed by the Texas Department 

of Criminal Justice today. 24 

S L A V E R Y I N W A L K E R C O U N T Y 

Between 1821 and 1836, Anglo Americans 

forcibly brought thousands of enslaved African 

Americans into Texas to perform agricultural 

and domestic work. Although the Mexican 

government threatened to restrict or even end 

black slavery, the Texas Revolution and 

Constitution of the Republic of Texas (1836) 

specifically guaranteed the rights of 

slaveholders. After Texas joined the United 

States in 1845, the institution of slavery 

solidified and expanded as more slaves entered 

the system. 25 

In Walker County the number of enslaved 

African Americans grew from 1,301 in 1850 to 

4,135 in 1860. Local slaves outnumbered white 

residents in the county, and they performed the 

vast majority of the agricultural work in the 

area. 26 Obviously, there were great differences in 

the daily experiences of enslaved African 

Americans. Some, like Joshua Houston and Jeff 

Hamilton, had a comparatively good 

experience, since they were owned by the 

principled Sam Houston. Joshua Houston 

received a rudimentary education and became a 

skilled blacksmith, a craft which would 

ultimately garner him great respect among the 

white citizens of Huntsville. Even so, Joshua 

Houston could not marry the woman whom he 

loved or act as a father to his children because 

his family lived on a distant plantation and slave 

marriages were forbidden by Texas law. 27 

Other enslaved African Americans toiled in 

obscurity for owners who could buy, sell, 

mortgage, and hire them out at a moment’s 

notice. The vast majority of slaves in Walker 

County worked as field hands, performing the 

back-breaking agricultural work required to 

produce the cotton and corn crops on which the 

local economy depended. There were, of course, 

craftsmen, house slaves, and livestock handlers, 

but these individuals were smaller in number 

and represented a kind of privileged class 

among the slave community. 

The slave diet consisted primarily of corn 

and pork, although many slaves supplemented 

their masters’ offering with a collection of sweet 

potatoes, garden vegetables, wild game, and fish 

that they provided for themselves. Slave houses 

were small, log cabins with dirt floors, a 

fireplace and bed. Slave clothing was generally 

made of inexpensive, crude material, and shoes 

were rarely fitted. Little medical care was 

available for slaves, and they suffered through 

all types of common illnesses as did their 

masters during the antebellum era. 28 


C H A P T E R 

I I I 

FROM CIVIL WAR TO 

RECONSTRUCTION, 1860-1872 

B Y J E F F R E Y L . L I T T L E J O H N A N D A M Y H Y D E N 

S A M H O U S T O N A N D T H E S E C E S S I O N C R I S I S 

As a new decade dawned in January 1860, the residents of Walker County prepared for a looming 

conflict over slavery and secession. Given the difficult issues involved, many locals took comfort in 

the fact that their friend, Sam Houston, sat in the governor’s seat in Austin. Houston was an 

outspoken unionist who supported both the U.S. Constitution and the right of states to determine 

their own policy on slavery. 29 

Over the next fourteen months, however, Houston’s centrist position became increasingly 

untenable as the national Democratic party divided and Abraham Lincoln, a Republican, moved to 

the forefront of the 1860 presidential race. Lincoln’s party opposed the expansion of slavery into the 

western territories, and Southern Democrats viewed the Republican standard bearer as the 

most dangerous man in America. Local planters in Walker County shared this opinion, given the 

fact that their collective livelihood rested on the backs of 4,135 slaves who were valued at more 

than $2,000,000. 30 

Shortly after Lincoln’s election on November 6, 1860, several leading figures from Walker County 

wrote to Sam Houston asking his “opinion in regard to the best course to pursue in this important 

period in our history.” Houston responded to his long-time neighbors on November 28, writing, 

❖ 

The third Walker County Courthouse 

(1873-1875). 



C h a p t e r I I I ✦ 1 5

I need not assure you that whenever the time 

shall come, when we must choose between a loss 

of our Constitutional rights and revolution, I 

shall choose the latter; but if I, who have led the 

people of Texas in stormy times of danger, 

hesitate to plunge into revolution now, it is not 

because I am ready to submit to Black 

Republican rule, but because I regard the 

Constitution of my country, and am determined 

to stand by it. Mr. Lincoln has been 

constitutionally elected and, much as I deprecate 

his success, no alternative is left me but to yield 

to the Constitution. The moment that 

instrument is violated by him, I will be foremost 

in demanding redress and the last to abandon 

my ground. 31 

❖ 

Above: Governor Sam Houston 

in 1859. 



Below: The Steamboat House where 

Sam Houston died on July 26, 1863. 



Despite Houston’s call for patience, it soon 

became clear that Lincoln’s election had thrust 

secessionist forces into power across the South. 

Beginning in December 1860, South Carolina 

seceded from the Union, and in short order five 

other states followed suit. The question was 

whether Houston could stand his ground and 

keep Texas in the Union, or if his state would 

join its neighbors in the parade of Southern 

secessionism. Houston initially had the upper 

hand, since the Texas legislature was not in 

session, but soon a group of secessionist-minded 

politicians drew up a decree calling for the 

election of delegates to a secession convention 

separate from the state legislature. Amid debate 

as to the legality of this action, delegates were 

elected and a convention date of January 28, 

1861, was established. With few options 

remaining, Houston recalled the legislature in 

hopes that it would denounce the secession 

convention, but legislators approved the meeting 

by an overwhelming vote of 55-15. John H. 

Reagan, an elected delegate to the convention, 

then made a last effort to pull Houston to the 

side of secession, but the governor would not be 

moved. In a prophetic statement to Reagan, 

Houston said, “Our people are going to war to 

perpetuate slavery, and the first gun fired in the 

war will be the [death] knell of slavery.” 32 

In spite of Houston’s warning, delegates to 

the secession convention—including attorneys 

Leonard Abercrombie and A.P. Wiley from 


Walker County—approved the dissolution of 

ties with the Union. Indeed, Houston’s own 

friends in Walker County voted 490 to 61 in 

favor of secession. State officials were then 

required to take an oath to the Confederacy, but 

when Houston refused to do so he was deposed 

as governor on March 18, 1861. Upon leaving 

office, Houston returned to Huntsville in 1862. 

Defeated and dejected, he took up residence in 

Rufus Bailey’s Steamboat House and died there 

from pneumonia on July 26, 1863. 33 

W A L K E R C O U N T Y A N D 

T H E C I V I L W A R 

Although Sam Houston took a principled 

stand against the Confederacy, his son, Sam 

Houston, Jr., and many of his closest friends from 

Walker County supported the cause of Southern 

nationalism and fought for the Confederacy. For 

instance, Anthony Martin Branch, a long-time 

associate of Houston’s and executor of his will, 

resigned his seat in the Texas Senate in 1862 and 

served as captain of Company A in George W. 

Carter’s Twenty-first Texas Cavalry. After a year in 

that position, Branch then won a seat to represent 

the Third District of Texas in the Confederate 

Congress. Branch was among the most wellknown 

local figures to serve in a position of 

authority within the Confederate government, 

and he defended what he perceived as the rights 

of Texas and the South throughout the Civil War. 34 

Indeed, hundreds of men from Walker 

County volunteered to fight for their homes and 

❖ 

Top, left: Anthony Martin Branch 

(1823-1867). 



Top, right: James Gillaspie 

(1805-1867). 



Below: The Huntsville Square 

during the Civil War. Photograph by 

F. B. Bailey. 




❖ 

Above: Thomas Jewett Goree 

(1835-1905). 

COURTESY OF THE TEXAS PRISON MUSEUM. 

Below: The home of the 

superintendent of the Texas 

Prison System. 



state during the war. Some local figures, like 

James Gillaspie, even took a lead role in 

organizing their own units. As a veteran of the 

Texas Revolution and Mexican War, Gillaspie 

raised a six-month company to serve in the 5th 

Texas Infantry, under the command of Colonel 

E. B. Nichols. Many of the men from this 

company, which was mustered out of service in 

March 1862, joined the 20th Texas Infantry at 

Galveston that summer. Henry Marshall Elmore, 

one of the founding fathers of Waverly, Texas, 

organized the 20th Infantry, and, with Leonard 

Abercrombie as lieutenant colonel, helped lead 

its effort to patrol the Texas coast and recapture 

Galveston in January 1863. 35 

Company H of the 4th Texas Infantry (the 

Porter Guards) was the first Civil War unit 

organized in Walker County to serve outside the 

state of Texas. Established in Huntsville with 

148-members on May 7, 1861, the unit was led 

initially by Proctor P. Porter of Montgomery 

County. When Porter died of typhoid fever after 

the battle of Gaines’ Mill in July 1862, however, 

Captain James T. Hunter of Walker County 

took command of the unit. Hunter was the 

son of the co-founder of Cincinnati—George 

Elliott Hunter—and he led his men in John 

Bell Hood’s Texas Brigade through some of 

the bloodiest battles of the war, including 

Second Manassas, Antietam, Gettysburg, 

Chickamauga, and the Wilderness. In fact, 

Hunter was among only eleven remaining 

members of Company H when his unit 

surrendered at Appomattox in 1865. 36 

Hunter’s unit was not the only local group to 

fight in the Eastern Theater during the war. Men 

from Walker County also joined Company D (the 

Waverly Confederates) and Company H (the 

Texas Polk Rifles) of the 5th Texas Infantry, which 

served with Hood’s Brigade in Virginia. Despite 

the historic role that these troops played in the 

war, Thomas Jewett Goree remains perhaps the 

best-known soldier from the Walker County area. 

In 1861, Goree left his law practice and boarded 

a boat from Galveston for the war in Virginia. On 

board, he met and formed a friendship with 

Major James Longstreet, who had recently 

resigned his position in the U.S. Army and was 

traveling to Virginia to join the Confederate 

Army. Goree served as aide-de-camp for 

Longstreet throughout the war, participating in 

many crucial battles of the period including 

Antietam, Fredericksburg, and Gettysburg. 37 

As soldiers from Walker County fought 

around the South, local citizens supported the 

war effort and sent supplies and encouragement 

to the men on the front lines. At the same time, 

the Texas government capitalized on the use of 

a cotton and woolen mill housed at the 

penitentiary in Huntsville. From December 1, 

1861, to August 31, 1863, prisoners produced 


2.2 million yards of cotton and 293,298 yards of 

wool, which were sold for both Confederate 

uniforms and civilian clothing. The sum total of 

profit for Texas during this twenty-one month 

period was $800,000. 38 

R E C O N S T R U C T I O N 

Following Robert E. Lee’s surrender at 

Appomattox in April 1865, much changed in 

Walker County. To begin with, many families 

had to adjust to the loss of a loved one who had 

died in the war, while other families welcomed 

home men who had to find a new place in the 

civilian community. For some, this adjustment 

was easier than for others. Thomas Goree, for 

instance, returned home to take control of 

Raven Hill plantation, which his mother had 

purchased from Sam Houston before the Civil 

War. In 1868, Goree married Elizabeth Thomas 

Nolley, the head of Andrew Female College in 

Huntsville, and soon he was selected as the 

Superintendent of the Texas Prison System. 

Leonard Abercrombie had similar success 

transitioning back to civilian life, returning to 

his legal practice in Huntsville and winning 

election to represent the Ninth District as a state 

senator in the 20th and 21st Texas legislature. 

Other local figures proved less successful, 

however. For instance, Anthony Martin Branch 

returned to Huntsville to resume his political 

career, but Republican legislators in the U.S. 

House of Representatives refused to seat him 

despite his electoral victories in 1865 and 1866. 

At the same time, African Americans in 

Walker County reveled in their newfound 

freedom. With the abolition of slavery and the 

recognition of black citizenship and voting 

rights, a new day dawned in the county. African 

Americans established churches, celebrated 

Juneteenth, and participated in opportunities 

provided by the Freedmen’s Bureau. Despite 

these advances, however, most freedmen found 

themselves at an excruciating crossroads. They 

had no formal education, owned little property, 

and had few options outside the agricultural 

world to which they had so long been shackled. 

There were few exceptions to this rule, but 

Joshua Houston was one of them. A former slave 

of Sam Houston’s, Joshua used his talents as a 

blacksmith to establish a place for himself in the 

new world taking shape around him. In January 

1866, he purchased his own land, built a house, 

and opened a blacksmith shop. He then won 

election to the office of city alderman in 1867 

and 1870, and was elected county commissioner 

in 1878 and 1882. Joshua worked tirelessly on 

behalf of local blacks and stood as a beacon of 

hope to a downtrodden community. 39 

Houston was not the only one to lend a 

helping hand. Other prominent African 

Americans in the county included: Richard 

Williams, a state representative in both the 12th 

❖ 

Above: The black “Union Church,” 

which became St. James Methodist 

Episcopal Church in 1869. 



Below: The Joshua Houston family in 

October 1898 at the wedding of 

Joshua Houston, Jr. ,and Georgia 

Carlina Orviss. 

COURTESY 0F THE SAM HOUSTON 

MEMORIAL MUSEUM.. 


❖ 

Right: Memphis Allen sat on the 

Board of Trustees for the Bishop Ward 

Normal and Collegiate Institute for 

Negroes in Huntsville (1883-1890). 

COURTESY OF THE SAMUEL WALKER HOUSTON 

MUSEUM AND CULTURAL CENTER. 

Below: African-American politicians 

who sat in the Texas legislature during 

Reconstruction. Richard Williams 

(bottom row, fifth column) and James 

H. Washington (fifth row, seventh 

column) represented Walker County. 

COURTESY OF THE INSTITUTE OF TEXAN 

CULTURES, SAN ANTONIO. 

and 13th Texas Legislatures; Memphis Allen, a 

founding member and trustee of the Bishop 

Ward Normal and Collegiate Institute for 

Negroes in Huntsville; Joseph M. Mettawer, a 

band leader, educator, and county 

commissioner; C. W. Luckie, an educator and 

member of the school board; and Jane Ward, a 

hotel operator and community activist. Many of 

these individuals worked with local whites, 

including Micajah Clark Rogers and George 

Washington Grant, who both helped African 

Americans secure land and improve their 

economic and educational opportunities. 

Despite these steps forward, however, a 

devastating yellow fever epidemic struck 

Huntsville in 1867, carrying off a full 10 percent 

of the population. From August 9 to October 

19, 1867, at least 130 citizens lost their lives, 

including James Gillaspie, Anthony Martin 

Branch, and Pleasant William Kittrell. 40 The 

yellow fever epidemic only underscored what 

was already a dark and tumultuous time. After 

touring East Texas in 1869, a reporter for the 

Cincinnati Commercial noted, “You cannot pick 

up a paper in Texas without reading of murder, 

assassinations and robbery….The civil authority 

is powerless—the military insufficient in 

number.” 41 Two years later in 1871, a rebellion 

broke out in Walker County when a freedman, 

Sam Jenkins, was found murdered after 

testifying against several white men in an assault 

case. Four whites—Nathaniel Outlaw, Joseph 

Wright, Fred Parks, and John M. Parish—were 

arrested for the murder. On January 11, 1871, 

three of them were found guilty. The verdict 

brought an outbreak of gunfire in the 

courtroom; Parish and Wright escaped, aided by 

Huntsville citizens. 

By February 20, Governor Edmund J. Davis 

established martial law in Walker County, an act 

required only three times across the state during 

Reconstruction, and a court martial was 

arranged to rectify the situation. The entire 

city population was taxed in order to pay 

for the military occupation. Soon enough, 

however, Democrats returned to power and 

Reconstruction came to an abrupt if 

unsuccessful end. It would take another century 

for African Americans to realize the promise of 

the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments that were 

added to the U.S. Constitution between 1865 

and 1870. But, the march to that “better day 

coming” had at least begun. 42 


C H A P T E R 

RAILROAD TOWNS AND SAM HOUSTON 

NORMAL INSTITUTE, 1872-1900 

B Y J E F F R E Y L . L I T T L E J O H N A N D G O N Z A L O T A M E Z 

I V 

T H E R A I L R O A D A R R I V E S 

In the midst of the chaos surrounding Reconstruction, the railroad arrived in Walker County. 

Many Huntsville and Waverly residents rejected the newfangled transportation system, 

however, suggesting that it might bring undesirables to the area and spark another yellow fever 

outbreak. The refusal of the county’s two largest settlements to work with the railroad industry meant 

that the Houston and Great Northern Railroad company looked to other areas to build its depots 

and tracks. 

Coming from the South, the company established its first local depot at Waverly Station in 1870. 

This site sat roughly ten miles west of Old Waverly and attracted many residents from the historic 

settlement. In fact, the depot soon changed its name to New Waverly, and the town received its own 

post office in 1873. Local planters used Polish immigrants to bring in the cotton, and the city boasted 

several general stores, boarding houses, cotton mills, and saloons by 1896. 43 

Moving north and east, the Phelps-Dodge Construction Company built the railway line for the 

Houston and Great Northern Railroad directly through Walker County. The construction company 

established a depot called Phelps in 1871. The stop was named for the company itself, but it soon 

developed into a community with a post office, hotel, general store, and school. Later, when 

Huntsville’s leaders realized that they had made a mistake in opposing the railroad, a branch line 

opened connecting Huntsville to the main line at Phelps. 44 

❖ 

A train arriving in New 

Waverly, 1910. 



C h a p t e r I V ✦ 2 1

Five miles further north and east, the Phelps- 

Dodge company built a second stop called 

Dodge in 1871. This also developed into a small 

town with its own hotel, store, and school. A 

post office was established in 1881, and within 

a decade the population stood at some two 

hundred people. The community added several 

churches, cotton gins, and drugstores in the 

first decade of the twentieth century, but it 

remained a rural, agricultural settlement of less 

than three hundred people. 45 

Along with Dodge and Phelps, the railroad 

established Riverside in 1872. This new 

settlement sat in the northeastern corner of the 

county on the Trinity River a short distance 

from the old site at Newport. Cotton, lumber, 

and stock raising were mainstays of the local 

economy, and by 1900 the town had two 

schools, three churches, two sawmills, two 

hotels, and two general stores. The population 

hovered between 100 and 300 for a long while, 

until the local schools were consolidated into 

the Huntsville system in the 1960s. Today, the 

town has roughly five hundred residents. 46 

T H E F O U N D I N G O F S A M 

H O U S T O N N O R M A L 

I N S T I T U T E , 1 8 7 9 - 1 8 8 1 

At the end of the nineteenth century, the state 

of Texas faced a looming crisis. Without a statefunded 

public normal school for teachers, 

private institutions like Huntsville’s Austin 

College were left with the responsibility of 

❖ 

Above: An 1896 advertisement from 

The Texarkana Gateway to Texas 

and the Southwest. 

COURTESY OF THE EDITOR’S COLLECTION. 

Right: In 1872 an eight-mile “tap 

line” connecting Huntsville and Phelps 

was completed. 




training school teachers for a booming 

population that was quickly outpacing the 

supply of qualified educators. Indeed, many 

private colleges concentrated their efforts on “the 

preparation of students for state certification 

examinations,” and not general knowledge, 

methodology, or administrative training. 47 

Dr. Barnas Sears, an agent of the Peabody 

Education Fund, along with the citizens of 

Huntsville and the Sixteenth Texas Legislature 

came together in 1879 to create the “first taxsupported, 

teacher-training institution in 

Texas.” 48 The newly chartered Sam Houston 

Normal Institute (SHNI) received $6,000 from 

the Peabody Fund and was named in honor of 

the Father of Texas. Again, the citizens of 

Walker County enthusiastically lent their 

support to the cause of educating future 

generations. The location “of the Institute, 

nearby and in full view of General Houston’s old 

homestead, was secured by a united effort on 

part of the [community].” 49 

In the fall of 1879, Sam Houston Normal 

Institute opened its doors on the site of the old 

Austin College campus and welcomed new 

students eager to start their college educations. 

Young people came from every corner of the 

Lone Star State, from booming cities to small 

towns and farms. The state legislature ensured 

every senatorial district received properly 

trained teachers through competitive regional 

scholarships, which completely funded the 

original 74 “state” students. 50 

The first years of the ambitious institution were 

challenging to say the least. The school’s first 

principal, Bernard Mallon, died of a sudden 

illness one week after classes began. The new 

principal, Hildreth Hosea Smith, made the best of 

his emergency appointment in his twenty-onemonth 

administration. He implemented his predecessor’s 

curriculum and even expanded it in 

order to supplement students’ deficiencies and 

produce superior educators. Before the end of 

his tenure, students were trained in pedagogy, 

the liberal arts, and the history and philosophy 

of education. 52 

S E T T I N G A N E X A M P L E 

Joseph A. Baldwin left a lasting impression on 

Walker County and Sam Houston Normal 

Institute. The life-long educator taught and 

❖ 

Above: Development in Riverside 

by 1920. 



Below: The first faculty and students 

at Sam Houston Normal Institute, 

1879-1880. 

COURTESY OF THE SAM HOUSTON STATE 

UNIVERSITY ARCHIVES. 

C h a p t e r I V ✦ 2 3

❖ 

Top: The Austin College Building on 

the campus of Sam Houston Normal 

Institute, c. the 1880s. 



Middle: Joseph A. Baldwin, 

Sam Houston Normal Institute’s 

third principal. 



Bottom: Old Main on the campus of 

Sam Houston Normal Institute. 



established normal institutes around the country 

and was tapped to become SHNI’s third principal 

while on a Texas lecture tour. He not only enjoyed 

the cooperation and respect of the faculty, but also 

a level of freedom not seen by his predecessors. 

Under his leadership, SHNI expanded its faculty 

from four to ten members, increased the course of 

study to three years, and renovated buildings and 

infrastructure. 53 Baldwin steered SHNI toward a 

decade of explosive growth and a reputation for 

excellence. The 2,650 graduates that attended 

during his administration proved their 

effectiveness throughout the state and inspired the 

creation of both a summer training program for 

county teachers and the position of chair of 

pedagogy that he occupied at the University of 

Texas from 1891 until his death in 1899. 54 

The success of SHNI drew the attention of 

prospective students, competing institutions, and 

several advocates. Although enrollment was 

booming, the increasing number of students 

made the inadequacy of local facilities very 

obvious. Superintendent Oscar Cooper, a former 

faculty member, and Huntsville’s own State 

Senator L. A. Abercrombie, an original SHNI 

trustee, lobbied for the appropriation of 

renovation funds. The state awarded Sam 

Houston $40,000 for the construction of a new 

“Main” Building, which was nearly double its 

1879 budget of $22,000. The new Main structure 

was completed by the 1890-91 school year; it 

housed “classrooms, offices, a library, and a grand 

auditorium” which accommodated more than 

twelve hundred students. 55 Indeed, Old Main 

stood as a testament to the tenure of Joseph 

Baldwin until its fiery demise in 1982. 

Henry Carr Pritchett, Baldwin’s successor, 

was married in a local Methodist church in 1876 

and had long standing ties to the community. As 

a Sam Houston faculty member, “Pritchett had 

prepared over two thousand students to teach 

mathematics to the schoolchildren of Texas” 

from 1881 to 1890. 56 After holding the post of 

Superintendent of Public Instruction for a year, 

he resigned to become SHNI’s fourth principal. 

He continued the policies of the previous 

administration, dutifully observing his 

responsibilities as principal and teaching until 

his death in 1908. 

Community leaders in Huntsville had always 

supported institutions of higher education. 


Local citizens were vital to the establishment of 

Austin College and Andrew Female College. 

And, once Sam Houston Normal Institute 

opened its doors, the same could be said of it. 

Local residents sent their children to the school; 

they donated money to SHNI programs; and 

many local women set up boarding houses for 

the students who attended the school. 

The influx of students to SHNI brought 

increased economic activity and a renewed 

spirit of optimism to the Walker County 

community. Students and faculty members 

attended local churches and spent money at 

local businesses. In addition, young people soon 

discovered amusing ways to bypass the strict 

discipline code enforced at the Institute. The 

local skating rink appreciated the business of 

the student body, until the pastime was added to 

the list of prohibited activities for girls. The 

male students also faced disciplinary actions if 

caught drinking or playing cards. SHNI kept a 

watchful eye on the student body in order to 

promote its graduates as exemplary members of 

❖ 

Top, left: Henry Carr Pritchett, 

Sam Houston Normal Institute’s 

fourth principal. 



Top, right: Miss Henrie Willison’s 

boarding house for ladies in 

Huntsville, c. 1899. 



Below: Residents of the Smede Valley 

boarding house for ladies in 

Huntsville, c 1897. 



C h a p t e r I V ✦ 2 5

❖ 

Above: The Henry Opera House (last 

building at the top of the block) 

around 1909. 



Below: F. H. Foster and Company at 

University Avenue and 12th Street. 



the community. 57 With a growing list of 

forbidden activities, students found an 

increasing number of local venues to support— 

this was the case for the Henry Opera House. 

John Henry opened a dry goods and grocery 

store in 1883. Soon after, he converted the 

second floor into a theatre and hosted “traveling 

musicians, theatrical arts, magicians, and other 

performers” from around the country. In 1909, 

it played the first motion picture to be shown in 

the city of Huntsville. 58 

Other business leaders and local politicians 

made their mark in Walker County as well. The 

grandsons of George Fitzhugh, author of 

Sociology for the South, established a local 

mercantile operation on the Huntsville Square 

in 1893. 59 At the same time, Thomas Henry Ball, 

a Huntsville native, graduated from Austin 

College in 1871 and was the city’s mayor 

from 1877 to 1892. In 1896, he was elected 

to serve in the United States Congress and 

helped secure “the first federal aid for 

development of the Houston Ship Channel in 

1899.” In 1907 the community of Peck, Texas— 

northwest of Houston—changed its name to 

Tomball in recognition of the congressman’s 

representation and contribution to the state’s 

economic development. 60 


C H A P T E R 

PROGRESS AND THE DAWN OF 

A NEW CENTURY, 1900-1929 

B Y P A T R I C I A S T A N I S Z E W S K I - H A L E 

V 

P R O G R E S S I V E E R A L E A D E R S 

When Marcellus Foster graduated from Sam Houston Normal Institute in 1890, he had little 

inkling of the dramatic events that lay in his future. After a stint with the Huntsville Item and a year 

at the University of Texas, the young Huntsvillian moved to Houston and joined the staff at the city’s 

largest newspaper, the Post. With a swift pen and a sharp mind, Foster rose quickly in the ranks, 

becoming the youngest managing editor of a Texas newspaper in 1899 at the age of twenty-eight. 

Under his leadership, the Post covered the Galveston Hurricane of 1900, keeping the citizens of the 

nation informed about the devastated city. Shortly after the storm, Foster took his earnings from a 

successful investment in the Spindletop oilfield and founded his own newspaper, the Houston 

Chronicle. The young man from Huntsville soon had an afternoon paper that sold more than seven 

thousand copies a day, and that was just for starters. Foster quickly established several other 

businesses and became one of the city’s leading figures, fighting a valiant campaign against the Ku 

Klux Klan and organized crime in Texas. 61 

Foster was just one of the many successful individuals that emerged from Walker County during the 

Progressive era at the dawn of the twentieth century. Another famous figure, Minnie Fisher Cunningham, 

shared his broad vision and crusading spirit. Born in New Waverly in 1882, Cunningham became 

immersed in the political sphere when her father took her to Democratic Party meetings. After graduating 

from the University of Texas, Cunningham served as a pharmacist in Huntsville, where she quickly 

learned the inequities facing women in the workplace. It was also in Huntsville that she met her husband, 

❖ 

A view of Sam Houston Normal 

Institute from the northeast, 

about 1927. 



C h a p t e r V ✦ 2 7

❖ 

Top, left: Marcellus E. Foster (1870- 

1942) in Houston with his 

grandchildren and attorney 

Clarence Darrow. 

COURTESY OF THE EDITOR’S COLLECTION. 

Top, right: Minnie Fisher 

Cunningham (1882-1964). 



Below: The north entrance to the 

Texas Penitentiary at Huntsville, 

c. 1920. 



B. J. Cunningham, a lawyer and insurance 

executive who introduced her to political 

campaigning. From 1907 to 1917, Cunningham 

rose in power from the president of Galveston’s 

local suffrage chapter to the president of the Texas 

Woman Suffrage Association. Then, in 1918, 

Carrie Chapman Catt, one of the most influential 

women of the era, selected Cunningham to lobby 

for the passage of the 19th amendment in 

Congress. With the ratification of the amendment 

in 1920, and the death of her husband in 1927, 

Cunningham returned to Walker County to begin 

a hard-fought, but ultimately unsuccessful 

campaign for the U.S. Senate. This failure did not 

discourage her, however; she continued to be 

active in politics and the Democratic party until 

her death in 1964. 62 

Inspired by Foster, Cunningham, and 

national progressive leaders like Theodore 

Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, Walker 

County’s residents looked for ways to improve 

living conditions in their own neighborhoods 

and towns. One area that seemed ripe for 

change was the infamous convict lease system 

Opposite, top: Inmates working under 

the convict lease system. 


Opposite, middle: A view of the 

Peabody Building from the yard of the 

President's residence at Sam Houston 

Normal Institute. 



Opposite, bottom: The Samuel Walker 

Houston Training School. 

COURTESY OF THE JACKSON DAVIS COLLECTION 

OF AFRICAN AMERICAN EDUCATIONAL 

PHOTOGRAPHS, SPECIAL COLLECTIONS, 

UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA LIBRARY. 


that had come to symbolize much that was 

wrong with the prison system at the turn of the 

twentieth century. Instituted in 1871, convict 

lease was a profitable practice that allowed the 

state government to raise revenue for poorly 

funded, overcrowded prisons by leasing 

prisoners to work for private individuals. The 

leasing of convicts proved fruitful as it lessened 

the number of prisoners who needed to be 

housed in Huntsville and “supplied the penal 

system with substantial financial support by 

providing cheap labor and producing goods for 

sale.” 63 In the fall of 1908, however, Reverend 

Jake Hodges, a chaplain at the Huntsville 

Penitentiary, provided a first-hand account of 

the savage brutality and sexual abuse he had 

witnessed in the convict leasing program to 

George Briggs, a progressive young reporter 

with the San Antonio Express. Briggs’s brilliant 

exposé condemning the prison system finally 

forced Texas Governor Thomas M. Campbell to 

call for a “searching, sweeping, and effective” 

probe into convict leasing. The investigation 

turned up a host of problems, including 

financial corruption, physical abuse, and 

appalling living conditions for prisoners. Moved 

by the report, Campbell signed a law that ended 

the convict lease system on September 17, 

1910, and two years later all existing lease 

contracts were canceled so that prisoners could 

return to state control. 64 

E D U C A T I O N A L 

D E V E L O P M E N T 

Progressive Era reformers had a dramatic 

impact on education in Walker County. At Sam 

Houston Normal Institute, the area’s largest 

educational institution, President Henry Carr 

Pritchett oversaw a growing campus and the 

addition of a beautiful new Peabody Library. 

Opened in 1902, the library made Sam Houston 

the first institution of higher education in Texas 

to have an individual building devoted solely 

for library purposes. Harry Fishburne Estill 

replaced Pritchett at the helm of Sam Houston 

Normal in 1908 and followed in his 

predecessor’s footsteps, expanding the 

university on several fronts. By 1911, 

coursework was expanded from two years to 

four years giving the institution junior college 

status. In accordance with the growing city of 

C h a p t e r V ✦ 2 9

❖ 

Above: New Waverly School, early 

twentieth century. 



Below: Three Houston children, two 

veterans of the Battle of San Jacinto, 

and William Jennings Bryan attended 

the 1911 unveiling ceremony for the 

Sam Houston Monument in 

Oakwood Cemetery. 



Huntsville, the university offered its first 

baccalaureate degree in 1919 and changed 

its name to Sam Houston State Teachers 

College in 1923. The University’s progressive 

era ended with the Semi-Centennial Celebration 

which included the dedication of the Sam 

Houston Woodland Home and the dedication 

of the new Estill library building on May 

3-4, 1929. 65 

African American leaders in Walker County 

pursued new educational opportunities for their 

children as well. In 1906, Samuel Walker 

Houston, the son of Joshua Houston, took a 

teaching job in the small community of Galilee 

about five miles west of Huntsville. Disgusted 

with the poor facilities that existed for his 

students, Houston used part of his own teaching 

salary to rent the Galilee Methodist Church to 

use as a schoolhouse. With the help of the local 

community, he secured the donation of one acre 

of land from Melinda Williams for the 

construction of a new school building, which 

soon became known as the Sam Houston 

Industrial and Training School. Over time, 

Houston hired more teachers, including Jack 

Beauchamp, Paul Chretien, and Hope Harville, 

his future wife. With these colleagues, Houston 

emphasized a vocational form of education 

designed by Booker T. Washington, the founder 

of Tuskegee Institute. At Houston’s school, 

young women were trained in homemaking, 

sewing, and cooking, while young men learned 

carpentry, woodworking, and mathematics. In 

addition, there were classes in music, 

educational philosophy, and the humanities as 

well. Local residents loved the school, and 

Houston soon provided free education to 

African American children from all over the 

county. Within fifteen years of its founding, the 

school was serving 400 students and was 

regarded as one of the “best rural black schools 

in Texas.” In 1930, Huntsville Independent 

School District incorporated the school into its 


local system, and Houston became the county 

superintendent of black schools. 66 

As local educators strove to improve the 

opportunities available in Walker County, the 

area’s business and political leaders worked with 

the Texas legislature to memorialize the region’s 

greatest hero, Sam Houston. In 1909, legislators 

allocated ten thousand dollars to hire Pompeo 

Coppini to construct a granite statue of Houston 

to replace the small grave marker that Margaret 

Houston had erected at the time of her 

husband’s death. Two years later the monument 

was complete and a dedication ceremony was 

held. While there were numerous issues with 

the sculpture—including the misspelling of the 

word governor on the back of the statue—the 

service on April 21, 1911, was a success. 

William Jennings Bryan, the great Democratic 

politician and three-time presidential candidate, 

gave the keynote speech to a crowd of over 

seven thousand people. Bryan reminded the 

audience that General Houston was a crucial 

“part of the nation’s history” and had been one 

of the “the very foundation stones upon which 

this great and growing state was built.” 67 

T H E G R E A T W A R 

When the Great War broke out in 1914, Walker 

County residents had little interest in joining the 

European conflict. Instead, they were busy 

supporting a local hero, Tom Ball, as he waged a 

prohibitionist campaign to win the Democratic 

nomination for governor. Although Ball had the 

support of President Woodrow Wilson and 

Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan, he lost 

the contest to James “Farmer Jim” Ferguson, who 

won the governor’s race in November 1914. 

Following Ball’s defeat, however, a series of 

events focused local attention on Germany and 

the threat it posed to American interests. 

German U-boats were sinking American ships 

off the European coast, and the German 

government had encouraged Mexico to declare 

war on the United States in the infamous 

Zimmerman Telegram. Taken together, these 

threats led the U.S. Congress to declare war on 

Germany on April 6, 1917, and Walker County 

residents quickly got behind the war effort. By 

June, the Dallas Morning News reported that 

Huntsville banks had subscribed to “more than 

double the amount [of war bonds] allotted” to 

the area, and men were joining the military 

ranks by the hundreds. 68 Young soldiers from 

many of the surrounding communities gave 

their lives in the “war to make the world safe for 

democracy.” Huntsville residents William F. 

Benge, Benjamin E. High, George Gillaspie, and 

Charley V. Thompson were among the local men 

killed in action, as were Samuel I. Crawford, 

Jennings B. Crow, and Clarence L. Perry of New 

Waverly, Douglas H. Cansler of Pine Prairie, and 

James S. Patterson of Jordyville. 

❖ 

Above: World War I soldiers on the 

steps of Old Main, c. 1917. 



Below: John W. Thomason, Jr. 

(1893-1944). 



C h a p t e r V ✦ 3 1

❖ 

Operators at the switchboard, 

Huntsville Telephone Company, 1920. 



Inspired by the heroic sacrifices of his fellow 

soldiers, Huntsvillian John W. Thomason, Jr., 

decided to write a book about his experiences in 

the Great War. Born in 1893, Thomason studied 

art and worked as a writer in the editorial 

department at the Houston Chronicle before 

being appointed second lieutenant in the 

Marine Corps in April 1917. The following year, 

he and one of his men dislodged and killed 13 

German soldiers who were firing on Marines at 

Soissons, France, saving many lives and opening 

the way for a strategic advance. For his heroism, 

Thomason earned the Navy Cross and a 

reputation for bold, decisive action. 

When he returned from the war, he 

published Fix Bayonets!, a first-hand account of 

the Marines most famous actions, including the 

Argonne Forest, Belleau Wood, Chateau Thierry, 

Mont Blanc, and St Mihiel. Aside from his 

military accomplishments, Thomason also 

wrote nearly a dozen illustrated books and 

published numerous articles. Thomason’s work 

during and after World War I continues to be 

recognized today. A U.S. destroyer was named 

for him as well as a Marine Corps award “for 

excellence in the fine or applied arts.” Locally, 

the special collections room at Sam Houston 

State University’s Newton Gresham Library is 

named in his honor. 69 

The signing of an armistice on November 11, 

1918, brought the blowing of whistles, a grand 

rally, and speeches to celebrate the end of the 

Great War. The United States had prevailed with 

its allies in the conflict, and at the local level 

many soldiers were returning to their homes. 

Yet, all was not right in Walker County. 

Although the cotton crop was producing better 

yields than at any time in the previous two 

decades, race relations in the area were terribly 

strained and sharecroppers were facing an 

uncertain future. In June 1918, local whites in 

Dodge lynched the Cabiness family, killing at 

least six African Americans in a brazen act of 

violence. Then, during the “Red Summer” of 

1919, several white residents in Huntsville 

attacked two groups of African Americans 

including Ed Morgan, George Mosely, and Levi 

Preston for allegedly having relations with a 

white woman. Although all the men refuted the 

charge, and the woman herself denied knowing 

any of them, the white mob nearly killed several 

of the men, souring race relations in the 

community for years to come. 

As if this was not enough, many African 

Americans and white laboring people in Walker 

County were reduced to working as 

sharecroppers or tenant farmers on land owned 

by others. By the end of the 1920s, 1,348 out of 

the 2,477 farms in the county were operated by 

tenants, and many of these families struggled to 

make ends meet. 70 

Farm tenancy was not the only issue plaguing 

farmers in Walker County. During rain storms 

and wet months, they often could not leave their 

land due to impassable roads, which meant that 

they had little contact with the outside world. In 

the late 1920s, however, the isolation of rural 

farmers began to change as mail delivery, the 

telephone, and the automobile began to make 

their way beyond the cities of the area. By 1930, 

Huntsville had two movie theaters, a golf 

course, and several hobby-oriented groups such 

as the Cub Scouts. 

These developments, along with the introduction 

of dozens of new cars forced the local 

government to allocate time and money towards 

the paving of roads. For instance, the road 

around the Huntsville Square was paved in 

1918, and in 1928 the county allocated two 

million dollars to pave streets beyond the 

downtown district. These paving projects made 

Walker County a mid-point between Houston 

and Dallas, and they helped bring visitors to 

Huntsville for family events and sightseeing. 71 


C H A P T E R 

FROM THE GREAT DEPRESSION TO 

WORLD WAR II, 1930-1945 

V I 

B Y S H A R L A M I L E S 

T H E G R E A T D E P R E S S I O N 

Shortly after the Stock Market Crash in October 1929, America entered the worst economic 

depression in its history. Banks failed by the thousands; prices for agricultural goods dropped to an 

all-time low; and, unemployment skyrocketed to nearly twenty-five percent. Many Americans 

blamed Wall Street bankers, erratic foreign markets, or “government waste and extravagance” for the 

downturn. In Walker County, J. W. Oliphint noted that “all classes of people…suffered serious 

declines in revenue” and that there was “practically no sale for real estate.” Cotton prices across the 

state dropped from 19.6 cents per pound in 1927 to 5.7 cents per pound in 1931. Facing this 

economic calamity, Tom Ball of the First National Bank in Huntsville, recommended that farmers 

reduce their acreage and produce a better, long staple cotton crop, which would bring higher prices 

on the open market. Many farmers followed Ball’s advice, but the cut in production had unforeseen 

consequences, as dozens of tenant farmers and sharecroppers were kicked off the land to reduce 

production. The “paramount issue” facing the county, the Huntsville Item argued in 1932, was 

unemployment. “[A]ll other problems seem insignificant,” the paper said, when men and women are 

“denied an honorable means of earning a livelihood.” 72 

The leaders of Walker County called for broad-based, “co-operative action” to assist local 

individuals in overcoming the deprivation brought on by the Great Depression. In fact, the city of 

Huntsville “helped the unemployment situation by putting [men] to work in repairing the streets.” 

Charles N. Shaver, who formerly represented the local district in the Texas Legislature and eventually 

❖ 

Edward Boettcher’s sawmill. 

COURTESY OF THE BOETTCHER MILL ORAL 

HISTORY PROJECT. 

C h a p t e r V I ✦ 3 3

❖ 

Above: Andrew Smither, Lee Carter, 

and James "Bo" Roundtree, carpenters 

at work on the Jesse Baker farm 

in 1930s. 

COURTESY OF THE SAMUEL WALKER HOUSTON 

MUSEUM AND CULTURAL CENTER. 

Below: An advertisement for 

Café Raven. 



became the sixth president of Sam Houston 

State Teacher’s College (SHSTC), facilitated a 

private form of job growth when he built “a 

modern filling station” for the Gulf Company. 

Others chipped in as well. In June 1930, Abe 

Dabaghi, Fred Morris, and Stuart Nemir, Sr., 

launched their own bid against the Depression 

when they opened the Café Raven on the 

Huntsville Square. This well-appointed 

restaurant took its name from Sam Houston’s 

Cherokee title, “The Raven,” and soon became a 

regional favorite. The same could be said for 

Tom C. Oliphint’s Motor Company, which 

expanded during the period. But, these types of 

limited aid hardly made an impact on the 

unemployment situation, and the county’s 

economic outlook remained bleak throughout 

the 1930s. Local African American workers like 

George Oliphant recalled years of hard labor 

during the period, explaining that his job laying 

water lines and reading water meters for the 

City of Huntsville paid a mere $2 a day. 73 

Despite the hardships, some local businesses 

like Boettcher’s Lumber Mill grew and prospered 

during the Depression. Established in 1929 by 

Edward Boettcher, the mill, located one mile 

from Huntsville’s town square, employed 135 

men, many of whom were newly-arrived 

Mexican migrants. Andrew Martinez, whose 

maternal grandfather was “instrumental in 

helping build the saw mill,” remembered it as a 

large, complex operation. By 1930 the mill 

produced an average daily cut of forty thousand 

feet of lumber and required several trucks for 

transporting the product. Boettcher also built 

forty tenant houses and a commissary for his 

workers. Some critics of the operation have 

argued that Boettcher exploited his workers, 

paying them in script and requiring that they 


uy their groceries and personal items from his 

store. Andrew Martinez disagrees, however, 

pointing out that many local businesses did not 

serve the Hispanic community, and that 

Boettcher was simply interested in providing his 

employees with a convenient place to shop. 74 

F R A N K L I N D . R O O S E V E L T 

A N D T H E N E W D E A L 

As the presidential election of 1932 

approached, most Walker County residents 

supported the Democratic candidate, New York 

Governor Franklin Roosevelt, over the 

Republican incumbent, Herbert Hoover. Many 

people blamed Hoover’s tariff and tax policies for 

worsening the Depression and held him 

personally responsible for their economic 

calamity. Although Roosevelt’s promise of a New 

Deal for America remained a “nebulous phrase” 

his boisterous spirit and positive attitude pushed 

him over the top in the November election. 75 

Following his inaugural address in March 

1933, Roosevelt called Congress into special 

session, and Democratic majorities in both 

houses passed a dramatic series of laws that had 

a direct impact in Walker County. For instance, 

the Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA), 

implemented in 1933, paid farmers for reducing 

their production of cotton and wheat in hopes 

that a decrease in supply would raise prices to 

pre-Depression levels. Between 1933 and 1935, 

the Agricultural Adjustment Administration paid 

Walker County farmers $259,371. The resulting 

reduction in supply did produce a modest boost 

in prices, but the Supreme Court declared the 

AAA unconstitutional in 1935, and farmers 

continued struggling throughout the period. 76 

In 1933, Congress attempted to address the 

unemployment problem by creating the Civilian 

Conservation Corps (CCC), which gave jobs to 

young, able-bodied men between the ages of 18 

and 25. By removing young, unmarried 

individuals from the national economy, it was 

hoped that older men with families could more 

easily find employment. On October 1, 1937, 

approximately 200 workers from the CCC 

arrived in Huntsville to initiate work on 

Huntsville State Park. The workers were part of 

Company 1823, consisting of African American 

veterans from World War I and the Spanish- 

American War. They constructed a dam creating 

Lake Raven, a stone recreation hall called Raven 

Lodge, and stone culverts and roadways. 

Despite their work, on November 24, 1940, a 

violent storm flooded the area and destroyed the 

dam. The park was closed for more than a 

decade while state and local leaders monitored 

❖ 

A layout plan of Huntsville 

State Park. 

COURTESY OF THE NATIONAL ARCHIVES, DENVER. 

C h a p t e r V I ✦ 3 5

❖ 

Above: Men with the Civilian 

Conservation Corps building the dam 

that made Lake Raven. 

COURTESY OF THE NATIONAL ARCHIVES, DENVER. 

Below: Robert A. Josey Boy Scout 

Lodge built as part of a Works 

Progress Administration project. 

COURTESY OF THE EDITOR. 

reconstruction plans for the site. On May 18, 

1956, the park officially reopened after a 

massive reconstruction effort. 77 

Another New Deal program, the Civil Works 

Administration (CWA), created temporary 

manual labor jobs, which assisted the 

unemployed in Walker County and the broader 

region. Locally, the CWA facilitated the 

construction of the Robert A. Josey Boy Scout 

Lodge in Huntsville. Josey, a self-made 

millionaire and local philanthropist donated 

$5,000 to purchase the land for the lodge and 

set up a $30,000 trust fund to maintain it. The 

CWA then contributed $10,000 for 

construction and labor, and the group 

completed the building in 75 days. On June 17, 

1934, Huntsville citizens gathered for the 

dedication of the new lodge, which was “nestled 

in a little ravine in the pine woods just south of 

the city.” Each year the Josey trust fund also 

issued small rewards of $100 (later raised to 

$500) to Boy Scouts who demonstrated 

outstanding community service. 78 

In 1935, President Roosevelt activated the 

Works Progress Administration (WPA), which 

provided employment for millions of people in 

public works projects around the country. 

Between 1935 and 1943, the WPA provided 

employment for 600,000 Texans who built 

bridges, wrote stories, and surveyed 

archeological sites. One of the most important 

programs implemented in East Texas was the 

collection of slave narratives, an effort that was 

conducted by the Federal Writer’s Project of the 

WPA. Between 1936 and 1938, the Project 

conducted personal interviews with roughly 

three hundred former slaves in Texas and 

approximately a dozen from Walker County. 

Local subjects included Armstead and Harriet 

Barrett, Carey Davenport, Tom Holland, and 

Henry Probasco. In one interview, Tom Holland 

explained his responsibilities to his former 

master, “I chopped cotton and plowed and split 

rails, and then was a horse rider.” He also 

explained that they “allus [always] had plenty to 

eat, sich [such] as it was them days, plenty wild 

meat and cornbread cooked in ashes.” 79 

T H E T E X A S P R I S O N 

R O D E O A N D C E N T E N N I A L 

C E L E B R A T I O N 

In 1930, the board of directors for the Texas 

Prison System appointed Marshall Lee Simmons 

as its General Manager. Known as a reformer, 

Simmons worked to improve living and 

working conditions within the system. He 

solved numerous financial deficiencies, rooted 

out fraud and organizational negligence, and 

sought to end inmate abuse that had long 

tarnished the reputation of the Texas Prison 

System. In addition, Simmons aggressively 

pursued the infamous outlaws, Bonnie Parker 

and Clyde Barrow. In 1934, after Bonnie and 

Clyde’s embarrassing raid on the Eastham farm 

in Houston County, Simmons received 

permission from Governor Miriam (Ma) 

Ferguson to retain the services of Texas Ranger 


Frank Hamer, who ultimately ended the careers 

of the legendary criminals. 80 

In another act that proved remarkably 

popular, Simmons instituted the first Texas 

Prison Rodeo in 1931. The event quickly gained 

fame as “Texas’ fastest and wildest rodeo.” By 

1933 it had not only generated considerable 

revenue for the Texas Prison System, but it 

became a popular sensation with attendance 

mushrooming to 15,000. In fact, attendance 

became so high that the following year prison 

officials had to build wooden bleachers and 

charge admission. The proceeds from the rodeo 

financed an education and recreation fund that 

supported everything from textbooks and 

dentures to Christmas turkeys. Simmons gained 

additional credit for luring talented celebrities 

to entertain during the rodeo’s formative years, 

including cowboy Tom Mix, and musical groups 

such as the Cotton Pickers Glee Club. 81 

If the Prison Rodeo brought people to Walker 

County, then so too did the Texas Centennial 

Celebration that took place in 1936. Joseph L. 

Clark, a professor of History at Sam Houston 

Normal Institute, spearheaded the Walker County 

Centennial Committee, which pushed for the 

creation of the Sam Houston Memorial Museum 

(SHMM). Previously, in 1929, Harry F. Estill, 

President of Sam Houston State, had requested a 

$3,500 annual budget to maintain Sam Houston’s 

historic home. By 1935, however, Estill and local 

leaders had convinced the state legislature to 

appropriate more than “ten times that amount” for 

the renovation and construction of a site that 

ultimately became the SHMM. 82 In March 1936, 

the Huntsville Item reported that three governors 

attended the ground breaking ceremonies for the 

museum with President Estill and thousands of 

other visitors who wanted to see Sam Houston’s 

final residence—the Steamboat House—and his 

❖ 

Above: A photograph from the 

first Texas Prison Rodeo in 

Huntsville, 1931. 


Below: A crowd gathered at Sam 

Houston’s gravesite for the Texas 

Centennial Celebration. 



earlier Woodland Home. 83 C h a p t e r V I ✦ 3 7

❖ 

Above: The Sam Houston Memorial 

Museum was built in 1936-1937. 



Below: Eleanor Roosevelt and 

Harry Estill. 



President Estill’s role in promoting Walker 

County went far beyond the museum, however. 

As head of Sam Houston State Teacher’s College 

(SHSTC), he oversaw a growing school in a time 

of transformation. Despite a brief dip in 

enrollment in 1933, SHSTC saw increasing 

numbers of students throughout the period. In 

1936 the school offered the first graduate 

programs in its history, and Belvin Hall, the first 

dormitory for women, was built. Indeed, Estill 

even helped secure a visit from First Lady 

Eleanor Roosevelt, who was then touring Texas 

as part of a goodwill tour of the South in 1937. 

As the only First Lady to ever give a talk at 

SHSTC, Roosevelt’s visit was particularly 

significant. In her address, entitled “The 

Problems of Youth,” Roosevelt encouraged 

young people to be bold and “grasp the true 

meaning of life.” 84 Following her address, 

President Estill showed Mrs. Roosevelt the 

museum and campus he had helped to build 

over twenty-nine years into “a full-fledged, 

accredited, degree-granting teachers’ college.” 85 

Following President Estill’s resignation in 

1937, Dr. Charles N. Shaver served as the 

college’s sixth president until 1942. 86 Shaver’s 

tenure saw the construction of the first men’s 

dormitory on campus and numerous other 

developments. But, it was the twenty-two-year 

term of the next president, Harmon Lowman, 

which was to really change the school. Under 

Lowman’s leadership, the campus expanded 

with new residence halls, instructional 

buildings, and a faculty appointments. Indeed, 

it was Lowman who was tasked with leading the 

institution through one of the nation’s most 

trying times, World War II. 

W O R L D W A R I I 

Following the Japanese attack on Pearl 

Harbor in December 1941, the residents of 

Walker County joined the nation as it prepared 

for war against Imperial Japan and Nazi 

Germany. Hundreds of local people were drafted 

into the military, while others volunteered for 

service in an effort to help their country. On the 

ground Walker County soldiers fought valiantly 

during the invasion of Europe. One large group 

of soldiers from the area joined Company F, 2D 

Battalion, 143d Infantry, which fought in North 


Africa, Italy, Southern France, and on the 

French-German border. The battles of Salerno, 

San Pietro, Liri Valley and Anzio in Northern 

Italy were particularly difficult for Walker 

County families. U.S. casualties for these 

operations included many local soldiers 

including J. J. McNeil, James H. Honeycut, 

Henry Roberts, Donald Sowell, Henry Steffen, 

and George Melvin White, the first Walker 

County soldier killed in the Second World War. 

By war’s end the 143rd regiment had lost 9,000 

men, captured 7,500 German prisoners and 

won five Medals of Honor and five Presidential 

Unit Citations, all within 386 days of combat. 87 

During the war, dozens of soldiers from the 

area perished in the fighting, giving their lives 

for their country and their ideals. Soldiers from 

Walker County fought and died in all theatres. 

Boyd W. Crawford suffered as a Japanese 

prisoner on Corregidor, Forest Cauthen 

perished in North Africa, Loye Humphries died 

in the Normandy Invasion, and Harvey Rigby 

lost his life in the liberation of France. Many 

Texas enlistees actively volunteered for 

dangerous flight training in the newly formed 

Army and Naval Air Corps. The life expectancy 

for pilots and their crews during World War II 

was on average twenty missions. Robert Small, 

whose plane crashed in the Pacific and James 

White, lost on a bombing raid over Belgium, 

were among those Walker County aviators who 

died for their country. Brothers and C-47 

transport plane pilots Harry Joe Bruce and 

Revees Murphee Bruce perished in wartime 

accidents over Germany and New Guinea. 

Several local servicemen and women received 

accolades for their sacrifices during wartime. 

Colonel M. B. Etheredge, a native of Huntsville 

and graduate of SHSTC, remains the most 

famous figure from the area. Etheredge enlisted 

in the army after learning of the Japanese attack 

on Pearl Harbor. Throughout his gallant service, 

he earned numerous medals and other wartime 

commendations, making him one of the 

most decorated war heroes of World War II— 

second only to Audie Murphy. On August 

22, 2000, under ordinance number 2000-15, 

the City of Huntsville dedicated a street in 

honor of Etheredge. 88 

Lieutenant Eula Fails Borneman also carried 

a heavy burden during the war. A native of 

Huntsville and graduate of Sam Houston State 

Teachers College, Borneman was on the island 

of Corregidor when the Japanese Army overran 

it in 1942. She and 68 other nurses were taken 

prisoner and moved to Manila, where they were 

❖ 

The 143rd Infantry, Company F, 36th 

Division, on the east side of the 

Huntsville square. 



C h a p t e r V I ✦ 3 9

imprisoned at the University of Santo Thomas. 

After almost three years in captivity, she was 

liberated on February 4, 1945, and flown to 

Walter Reed Hospital. Shortly thereafter, she 

met and married an Army chaplain, Colonel 

John Borneman, who had also been a POW in 

World War II. 89 

On the home front during the war, Walker 

County residents did all they could to support 

the effort. Local citizens rationed gasoline, 

bought war bonds, planted victory gardens, and 

longed for a time when their loved ones would 

return home. In one instance, however, Walker 

County proved quite distinctive. In 1942 the 

Provost Marshall General’s Office ordered the 

construction of Camp Huntsville, the first 

prisoner of war camp to be built in the United 

States during World War II. By the end of 1943, 

the camp housed 4,840 POWs, and a robust reeducation 

program was soon created to teach 

German and Japanese soldiers the finer points 

of American democracy. 

In August 1945, the residents of Walker 

County celebrated the news that the war was 

finally over. Twenty-thousand Texans, many of 

them from the eastern half of the state, died 

during the war. Nevertheless, few people ever 

questioned the role that America had played in 

the conflict. The nation had been attacked by 

imperial and fascist forces from abroad, and 

Walker County’s residents were proud that they 

had done their part to halt the Japanese Empire 

and Nazi Germany. 90 

❖ 

Above: “Let’s Go!” recruiting poster 

designed by John W. Thomason, Jr. 



Right: Camp Huntsville, the first 

World War II prisoner of war camp 

in Texas. 




C H A P T E R 

V I I 

A TRYING TIME, 1945-68 

B Y C A R O L Y N A . C A R R O L L 

T H E P O S T W A R B O O M 

The United States emerged from World War II as the most powerful nation on earth. “What Rome 

was to the ancient world,” wrote journalist Walter Lippmann, “America is to be to the world of 

tomorrow.” With its allies, the U.S. had defeated tyrannical regimes in Nazi Germany and Japan; it had 

helped establish peace and stability with the formation of the United Nations; and America had the 

largest and most robust economy in the world. Yet, peace did not usher in an era of domestic 

tranquility or international harmony. On the contrary, the two decades that followed the war witnessed 

dramatic civil rights demonstrations and protracted military conflicts as Americans struggled to 

overcome their own domestic problems while fighting a Cold War against the Soviet Union. 

❖ 

A student protester marches around 

the Walker County Courthouse, 1965. 



C h a p t e r V I I ✦ 4 1

❖ 

Top: Huntsville City Council with W. 

S. Gibbs and Kate Barr Ross, 1960. 



Middle: In 1927, Ella Smither deeded 

land for the construction of Huntsville 

Memorial Hospital. 



Bottom: In 1948 a new brick 

Huntsville Memorial Hospital was 

constructed. 



In Walker County, the tensions of the coming 

decades seemed far away in 1945. The most 

notable outcome of World War II was the return of 

service men and women and the resulting baby 

boom that continued for the next decade. 

According to Kate Barr Ross, Huntsville’s long-time 

city secretary, 353 babies were born in the 

Huntsville area in 1946. This averaged one baby 

per day. Records show that the population of 

Walker County grew from 19,868 in 1940 to 

27,680 in 1970, an increase of almost 30 percent. 91 

As the county grew, health care became a 

major concern. With the threat of polio, leaders 

supported the March of Dimes and encouraged 

Walker County residents and businesses to 

donate generously. On September 6, 1945, fear 

set in among local residents when they learned 

of two cases of polio in Huntsville. Many 

parents did not want to send their children to 

school, but city leaders pled with the public to 

remain calm. The rise of polio and other 

medical issues compelled community activists 

to call for renovations and additions to the 

ailing building that housed Huntsville Memorial 

Hospital. Originally constructed in 1927, the 

wooden hospital building had only seven beds 

and rudimentary facilities. A new brick hospital 

was constructed in 1950, increasing the number 


❖ 

Left: An aerial view of Interstate 45 

construction, November 30, 1957. 



Below: A 1964 map of Huntsville’s 

roadways. 



of beds to fifty. A further addition was later 

made in 1965, accommodating 114 beds along 

with a convalescent unit. 92 

As county leaders improved the hospital, 

problems with other elements of the local 

infrastructure became apparent. For instance, 

motorists from Galveston and Houston had to 

drive through downtown Huntsville on their way 

to Dallas. This meant that a large volume of traffic 

and serious congestion occurred at the courthouse 

square, when tractor-trailers tried to make right 

angle turns to follow the highway route. A survey 

conducted in 1952 showed that 60% of the 

people who travelled through downtown 

Huntsville were in favor of a bypass. By 1956, 

Walker County’s leaders encouraged local citizens 

to vote for a $300,000 bond election for the 

construction of U.S. Hwy 75 and the Huntsville 

Bypass. Although some citizens worried about the 

negative impact that such a move would have on 

the local economy, the editor of the Huntsville Item 

urged his readers to support the project. “A 

growth in population inevitably follows a highway 

program of this size,” he said. “The people of 

Huntsville and Walker County stand to insure 


❖ 

Wendell Baker with his wife, Augusta. 

COURTESY OF WENDELL BAKER. 

their future prosperity and growth by accepting 

the highway proposal.” Indeed they did. The 

highway improvements brought an influx of 

temporary jobs as Walker County Judge Amos 

Gates encouraged contractors to hire young men 

from the area. High school and college students 

earned pocket money through this project. One 

such student, Joe Kirkland, cleared debris and set 

forms for concrete culverts along the roadway. 

Also during this period, massive improvements to 

farms and agriculture occurred. The prison 

system, timber industry, and Sam Houston 

State Teachers College employed many area 

citizens, and improvements to the education 

system began. 93 

T H E C I V I L R I G H T S 

M O V E M E N T 

In the midst of Walker County’s booming 

development, however, there lingered a deepseated 

and difficult problem to solve. Many white 

residents in the area had long discriminated 

against African Americans, and years of 

segregation had created a world in which whites 

and blacks lived in two separate spheres. Blacks 

were forbidden to eat at most local restaurants; 

they were forced to sit in the balcony in local 

theaters; and black parents faced the challenge of 

explaining to their children why they could not 

use the local swimming pool or state park. 

Despite these difficult circumstances, the most 

obvious form of racial discrimination occurred in 

the public school system, which required black 

children, teachers, and administrators to work in 

separate, inferior schools to those provided for 

white children in the area. Sarah Bartee, a longtime 

white resident of New Waverly, remembered 

that she attended school in a “beautiful old brick 

building with hardwood floors” during the 1940s, 

while “black children went to school…[in] a 

frame building,” which was “not a good quality.” 

“I feel bad,” Bartee said, “when I look back and see 

how much better we had it than they did.” 94 

In 1954, after years of legal campaigning by the 

National Association for the Advancement of 

Colored People (NAACP), the U.S. Supreme Court 

ruled in Brown v. Board of Education that segregated 

schools were unequal and thus unconstitutional. 

Encouraged by this decision, several local African 

Americans decided to push for integrated schools. 

Wendell Baker, a Walker County native, World 

War II veteran, and chemistry teacher at the allblack 

Samuel W. Houston High School led the 

charge. The battle proved very difficult, however. 

In 1961, Mance Park, the Superintendent of 

Schools in Huntsville, fired Baker from his 

teaching position, making it incredibly difficult for 

the black activist to continue his civil rights efforts. 

Undaunted, however, Baker formed the Walker 

County Voter’s League in December 1962 and 

registered voters throughout the city. Then, with 

Ernest McGowen, Walker County’s first black 

deputy, Baker met with Superintendent Park in 

June 1963 and pushed the local school district to 

integrate its facilities. Baker’s effort received 

additional support the following year when legal 

action forced Sam Houston State Teachers College 

to admit James Patrick as the school’s first African 

American student. 

At roughly the same time, Congress passed and 

President Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights 

Act of 1964. Taken together, these changes set the 

stage for one brave young African American 

student—Janet Smither—to desegregate Huntsville 

Independent School District in the fall of 1964. 

Young Smither went alone that first year, however, 

and it took four additional years of pressure by the 

black community to convince the school district to 

begin full scale desegregation in 1968. 95 

In November 1963, as local activists fought to 

integrate the schools, Jerry Jones, the president 


of the Walker County NAACP, joined with New 

Waverly residents Robert C. Harris and Milton 

Perry in a lawsuit requesting that the county 

commissioners desegregate the restrooms and 

drinking fountains at the county courthouse. 96 

One year later, the activists got their way, when 

the Civil Rights Act of 1964 banned all forms of 

racial discrimination in public places. Despite 

this victory, however, privately-owned 

businesses in Walker County continued to 

discriminate against African Americans. In July 

1965, eight days of demonstrations took place in 

downtown Huntsville as young people 

demanded the desegregation of Café Raven, Café 

Texan, and Life Theater. Although the 

demonstrations were controversial, they 

succeeded in desegregating the businesses on the 

downtown square and opened a new era in the 

history of Walker County. 97 

During the 1960s, few local whites supported 

the civil rights demonstrators, but Rupert 

Koeninger did. As chair of the sociology 

department at SHSTC, Koeninger was a devoted 

civil rights advocate. He sponsored the campus’s 

“young Democrats” and set up voter registration 

tables with his students at Guerrant Grocery Store 

and other sites frequented by blacks. Koeninger’s 

activities came at a cost, however. In 1962, 

William H. Kellogg, the leader of Huntsville’s John 

Birch Society, used his influence to have Koeninger 

dismissed as a professor from the college he had 

faithfully served for fifteen years. Koeninger’s 

dismissal became a national story, covered even by 

the dean of Southern history, C. Vann Woodward, 

in a blistering article that appeared in Harper’s 

magazine. Ultimately, Koeninger took a new job at 

Texas Southern University, and fifteen professors 

left SHSTC in protest of his firing. The American 

Association of University Professors (AAUP) also 

put Sam Houston on its censured list for violating 

Koeninger’s academic freedom. The case was not 

resolved until 1970, when the school settled with 

Koeninger and paid him $10,000. 98 

F R O M T H E K E N N E D Y 

A S S A S S I N A T I O N T O T H E 

V I E T N A M W A R 

Although Walker County citizens had their 

differences, on November 22, 1963, they put 

them aside to mourn the assassination of the 

❖ 

Above: John Arthur Patrick, the first 

African American student to attend 

Sam Houston State University. 



Below: The Rupert Koeninger family. 

The photograph was taken in 1948 at 

their SHSTC’s faculty house at 

County Campus. 

COURTESY OF FRIEDA KOENINGER. 


❖ 

Above: An aerial view of Sam 

Houston State University, c. 1960. 



Below: Dan Rather (center, standing), 

1953 editor of SHSTC’s student 

newspaper The Houstonian. 



country’s thirty-fifth president, John F. Kennedy 

in Dallas, Texas. A 1953-graduate of SHSTC, Dan 

Rather broke the story of Kennedy’s assassination. 

From editor of his college’s newspaper, The 

Houstonian, and reporter for Huntsville’s KSAM 

radio station, Rather joined CBS News in 1962 as 

chief of the network’s bureau in Dallas. As the 

result of his coverage of the assassination, CBS 

executives promoted him to positions as White 

House correspondent and foreign correspondent 

in London. Rather continued to gain notoriety 

with his coverage of the civil rights movement 

and Vietnam War, and he later became a news 

anchor with CBS. 99 

By 1966 the United States had deployed more 

than 395,000 soldiers to Vietnam. In contrast to 

the unified national effort in World War II, Walker 

County citizens were now called into service for a 

cause that divided the nation. While many college 

and university students from other campuses 

participated in anti-war demonstrations, students 

at Sam Houston State College (the word 

“Teachers” was dropped at the end of the 1964-65 

academic year) continued along in their 

traditional, patriotic style. Although the campus 

did recognize the Vietnam War Moratorium day 

in 1969, peace activists did not demonstrate or 

march. Dozens of students served in the war, and 

their classmates, at least, supported them. 

The Vietnam War may not have turned 

Huntsville’s college students into protesters, but 

they did have a voice in other matters. Policies 

ranging from desegregation and student’s rights, 

to curricula and curfews were covered in an 

underground newspaper called the Hyde Park 

Corner established in 1967. Short lived as it was, 

the paper had an effect. The president of the 

college, Dr. Arleigh Templeton, took notice of 

student concerns and agreed to a full-scale reevaluation 

of the undergraduate program. What 

this meant was not immediately clear, but one 

thing was for certain. The students, faculty, and 

residents of Walker County had changed in the 

1960s, and a new era awaited them in the 

coming decades. 100 


C H A P T E R 

V I I I 

HUNTSVILLE AND WALKER COUNTY, 

1968-PRESENT 

B Y M E R E D I T H A . M I L L E R A U S T I N 

Over the past four decades, the residents of Walker County have played an active role in the 

transformation of East Texas and the broader region. Since 1970, the county's population has more 

than doubled in size, growing from 27,680 in 1970 to 67,681 in 2010. During the same time, the 

landscape of Huntsville changed dramatically as many downtown businesses moved closer to 

Interstate 45 and chain stores began to overtake the “Mom and Pops.” 101 As the county has grown, it 

has also become more diverse. Although white residents remain the largest group, accounting for 67.1 

percent of the population, black residents make up 22.5 percent, and members of other groups 

account for 10.4 percent. Of the total population, 16.8 percent of Walker County's residents identify 

themselves as Hispanic or Latino. This trend is representative of a larger demographic transformation 

that is taking place around Texas, and it provides the vital energy at the center of much that is 

occurring in Walker County today. As new populations enter the region, established residents and 

institutions are working to maintain their historic traditions, while embracing the exciting possibilities 

taking place around them. 

The most visible developments to occur in Huntsville during the past forty years have come from 

the city’s institution of higher education, Sam Houston State University (SHSU). In 1970, the 

University Board of Regents named Elliott T. Bowers to serve as the ninth president of the school. 

Bowers transformed the university, overseeing a Master Building program that modernized 

the campus, while seeking to retain the historical integrity of SHSU. New buildings were constructed 

on the campus, new instructors were hired, and new course offerings were added. African American 

students, concerned over the lack of diversity in the faculty, pressured the administration to 

hire more people of color. In response, President Bowers affirmed his dedication to underrepresented 

❖ 

The Wall of Faces at the Samuel 

Walker Houston Cultural Center is 

a tribute to the African American 

leaders who helped shape 

Walker County. 

COURTESY OF MEREDITH AUSTIN. 

C h a p t e r V I I I ✦ 4 7

❖ 

Above: A map of Walker 

County Texas. 

Below: The Roberts-Farris Cabin was 

built in the mid-1840s and is now 

located in downtown Huntsville to 

help keep history alive. 


groups and formed a minority affairs committee. 

Over the course of the following decades, 

diversity on the campus increased 

tremendously, and students now enjoy being 

part of a variety of groups including the 

Mexican American Student Association and the 

National Association for the Advancement of 

Colored People. 102 

Student activism at SHSU became 

pronounced in 1971, when Huntsville’s young 

people registered to vote in record numbers and 

even helped elect a student to city council. This 

increased activity had at its heart a single issue: 

the sale and consumption of alcoholic 

beverages. Historically, Huntsville had been a 

conservative city that prohibited the sale of 

alcohol. In December 1971, however, the 

students forced through a referendum that 

legalized the sale of alcohol, and soon beer 

could be purchased at convenience stores and 

restaurants throughout the city. 103 

Ten years after the repeal of local prohibition, 

another symbol of Huntsville’s past fell in a blaze 

of glory. The architectural treasure of SHSU, ‘Old 

Main,’ had been constructed in 1890. It was an 

immense Gothic-style structure adorned with 

twenty-three stained glass windows, and it 

served as the iconic image of the school. 

However, in the predawn hours on February 12, 

1982, a fire broke out in the building. SHSU 

History Professor, Ty Cashion, captured the 

dramatic scene poignantly, when he wrote, “a 

stunned crowd, many in tears and holding their 

hands over quivering mouths, gathered as the 

inferno consumed the tinder-dry wooden 

interior of the doomed monolith.” With the 

destruction of Old Main, a new image of SHSU 

was designed by Presidents Bobby K. Marks and 

James F. Gaertner, who transformed the school 

from a rural, East Texas teaching college into a 


nationally known university. Today, Sam 

Houston State University’s student population is 

more than 17,000, and the school offers 80 

bachelor’s degrees, 59 master’s programs, and 6 

doctoral programs. In 2011, Dana L. Gibson 

became the first woman to serve as president of 

the university, and SHSU now holds the 

distinction of being named a “Doctoral Research 

University” by the Carnegie Commission on 

Higher Education. 104 

Down the hill from SHSU sits the 

headquarters of the Texas Department of 

Criminal Justice (TDCJ), which operates the 

second largest prison system in the United 

States. TDCJ provides thousands of jobs and 

vital income for many Walker County residents 

who work at the nine prisons in the area. Indeed, 

Huntsville has long been known as “prison city,” 

and many outsiders still remember the infamous 

prison siege that took place at the State 

Penitentiary in 1974. On July 24 that year, 

prisoners Federico Gomez Carrasco, Ignacio 

Cuevas, and Rudolfo Dominguez captured 

fifteen hostages and held them in the prison 

library for eleven days. Hostage and former 

prison guard Bob Heard appealed with the 

officials, "Give them whatever they want, and at 

least we'll know we tried, that we didn't die 

cooped up in here like a slaughterhouse—and 

that's what it will be." A botched escape attempt 

occurred and two women, both Walker County 

residents, Elizabeth Beseda and Judy Standley, 

were murdered. Currasco and Dominguez were 

killed in the attempt. The State of Texas executed 

Cuevas for his role in 1991. Father Joseph John 

O’Brien was also severely wounded in the ordeal. 

The 1974 Prison Siege changed many 

procedures at TDCJ, and ushered in a new era in 

the debate over capital punishment. 105 

Despite such a historic event, Walker County 

residents take pride in the TDCJ and generally 

resist the pained topic of executions. Huntsville 

has remained in the spotlight during the past 

forty years, however, with the notable 

executions of Karla Faye Tucker, “Candy Man” 

❖ 

Above: The ruins of Old Main after 

the 1982 fire that destroyed the 

building. 



Below: Dr. Dana Gibson, President of 





❖ 

Above: An inmate is pulled by a 

bronco in one of the last Texas Prison 

Rodeos in 1983. 



Below: A beautiful example of a 

nineteenth century bedroom preserved 

in the Huntsville-Walker County 

Museum. 


Ronald Clark O’Bryan, and Gary Lee Graham. 

As controversial as the death penalty is, the 

people of the county have shown great 

compassion to the families of inmates. In 1986, 

volunteers from the Texas Baptist Men, led by 

the Rev. Clyde Johnston built the Hospitality 

House. It offers beds to family members of 

inmates who travel long distances and asks for 

only a minimal donation to sustain its efforts. 106 

Just as the Hospitality House began 

welcoming its first guests, another Huntsville 

institution was closing its doors. The Texas Prison 

Rodeo reached its end in 1986. The Prison 

Rodeo, a tradition that lasted for more than half a 

century, garnered thousands of visitors each year 

and attracted national attention. Even so, the 

rodeo was indefinitely postponed in 1986 due to 

TDCJ’s concern that the arena needed $700,000 

in structural renovations. Others argue that the 

rodeo dominated the minds of prison officials, 

cost more revenue than was previously 

suggested, and encouraged the inmates to 

consent to the injury release form simply to make 

a small bit of money. With the loss of the Texas 

Prison Rodeo, Huntsville looked to its local 

groups to inspire and develop new ways to bring 

tourists to the county. 107 

The substantial growth of local historical 

groups in Walker County in the last forty years 

has done much to preserve the integrity and 

public knowledge of the region’s past. The most 

prominent group in maintaining the county’s 

history is the Walker County Historical 

Commission, created in 1963. The Commission 

has been responsible for the addition of many 

historical markers, now totaling more than 80. 

Another significant accomplishment is the 

establishment of the Huntsville and Walker 

County Museum, dedicated solely to the history 

of Walker County and located in the Gibbs- 

Powell House at the corner of 11th Street and 

Avenue M in Huntsville. Built in 1862 by 

Thomas Gibbs, the Commission converted the 

home into the Walker County History Museum 

in 1984, and it serves as a meeting place and 

educational site for local school groups. 108 

Another recent museum and cultural center to 

preserve the history of Walker County is the 


Samuel Walker Houston Museum and Cultural 

Center. Established to honor and perpetuate the 

legacy of Samuel Walker Houston, the museum 

encourages cultural and educational activities in 

the African American community in Walker 

County. 109 Houston founded Walker County’s 

first private African American high school and 

later served as principal of Huntsville’s Samuel W. 

Houston High School. One of the center’s unique 

features is a Wall of Faces, which depicts the cast 

faces of sixty-eight African Americans who have 

contributed to the success of Walker County. 

Perhaps the most striking feature on the 

Huntsville landscape is the world’s tallest statue 

of a Texas hero. A tremendous fundraising effort, 

along with state and local monies supported the 

sixty-seven-foot tribute to Sam Houston. The 

first meeting with artist David Adickes was in 

October 1991, and the dedication took place 

October 22, 1994. Reverend Earnest Grover, 

pastor of the First Baptist Church in Huntsville, 

delivered the invocation attended by many local 

and state dignitaries. Notable attendees included 

then Governor Ann Richards, Senator Kay Bailey 

Hutchison, and CBS News anchorman and 

SHSU alumnus Dan Rather. 110 

Bolstered by the success of the Gibbs-Powell 

Home, a group of Huntsville Volunteers, led by 

Linda Pease, began a fundraising effort to restore 

Huntsville’s historic Wynne home into an arts 

❖ 

Above: David Adicke’s sixty-sevenfoot 

tribute to Texas’ greatest hero, 

Sam Houston, on Interstate 45 

in Huntsville. 


Left: The mission of the Wynne Home 

is to promote and share the arts with 

the Huntsville and Walker County 

community. 



❖ 

The Texas Prison Museum proudly 

displays the long history of the Texas 

Department of Criminal Justice. 


center. The success came after extensive 

fundraising and $300,000 from the Huntsville 

City Council. The center strives to promote the 

regional arts and cultural heritage of the area. 

Mirroring the preservation efforts of the Gibbs- 

Powell and Wynne home, the city of Huntsville’s 

Main Street Program is responsible for the 

revitalization and up-keep of Huntsville’s historic 

city center. The 2007 “Cabin on the Square” 

project represented one such initiative. Maggie 

Farris Parker donated a historic cabin built around 

1840 to the city in order to save it from 

destruction. The historic cabin was moved from 

the Alton Farris estate and placed in downtown 

Huntsville. Active in the development of the 

historic site were Harold Hutcheson, then manager 

of the Main Street Program, Caroline Crimm of 

SHSU, Neil Smith of TDCJ, and Mac Woodward of 

the Sam Houston Memorial Museum. SHSU 

history students and faculty dismantled the 

Roberts-Farris Log Cabin, and inmates from the 

Eastham Unit rebuilt it on the site thought to be 

the location of the first building in Huntsville. 111 

Additional local museums, which have 

recently expanded, have garnered statewide 

attention. The Texas Prison Museum had a 

modest beginning in 1989, when it opened a 

small site on the downtown square in Huntsville. 

Thanks to extensive fundraising by Texas 

Department of Criminal Justice employees, the 

Prison Museum was able to develop an expansive 

location near the Wynne Unit, just north of 

Huntsville. Notable exhibits include a pistol 

recovered from notorious gangsters Bonnie and 

Clyde, artifacts from the now-extinct Texas 

Prison Rodeo, and “Old Sparky”, the infamous 

electric chair used in 361 executions. 

While the Texas Prison Museum attracts 

visitors with a glimpse into the lives of 

society’s worst, another institution, the HEARTS 

Veterans Museum, draws in visitors wanting to 

remember and honor the country’s finest. 

HEARTS, an acronym for “Helping Every 

American Remember Through Serving” was 

created by volunteer Charlotte Oleinik. It 

began as a small display in a Huntsville antique 

shop and is a now a permanent museum located 

in a recently opened $2-million facility. A 

Federal Emergency Management Agency grant 

made this transformation possible, as the 

building is also the planned evacuation center 

for Walker County. 112 

Recent hurricanes along the Texas Gulf Coast 

made the need for an evacuation center in Walker 

County pressing. Most striking was Hurricane 

Rita, which made landfall near Beaumont and 

wrought havoc along Interstate 45 in Walker 

County in September 2005. The storm brought 

down trees and cut off electricity in many 

neighborhoods, but it also stranded thousands of 

Houston motorists along the evacuation route. 

Many churches in the local community opened 

their doors to the evacuees, and two Red Cross 

designated shelters were opened at First Baptist 

Church and Family Faith Church. Many 

Huntsville residents volunteered and even 

opened their homes to those in need. Elkins Lake 

resident, Nell Miller Smith, remembers going out 

to the interstate with her husband, Don, and 

offering help to a stranded family. “We offered the 

family a place to take showers and a warm 

meal—we just felt we needed to help.” This need 

to help exemplified the sense of charity and 

goodness in Huntsville. Hurricane Ike also deeply 

affected Walker County in 2008 when massive 

power outages left residents in the dark and 

claimed the life of one of its residents. 113 

Thankfully, however, the loss of life was 

minimal during these storms and care was 

provided by the ever-growing Huntsville Memorial 

Hospital. The hospital’s tagline, “Down to earth 


and up to the minute,” reflects the history and 

growth of the institution during the past forty 

years. The hospital district has received many 

upgrades in technology, thus transforming the 

medical center into a twenty-first century 

complex. The first of these upgrades came in 1983 

with the addition of a state of the art $750,000 CT 

scanner. This expansion was important in that it 

saved at least one patient every day from having to 

travel to Montgomery County Medical Center in 

Conroe. A decade later, Huntsville again joined the 

cutting edge with the arrival of a magnetic 

resonance imaging machine- an MRI. With a price 

tag of $1 million and a weight of ten tons, this new 

machine eliminated some of the most dangerous 

side effects of traditional screening and prevented 

countless residents from traveling to Conroe or 

Houston to seek medical treatment. 114 

The lives of Walker County residents have not 

only benefited from better healthcare but recently 

have been enriched by cultural inspirations of local 

residents. Phoenix Commotion, led by Dan 

Phillips, is a local building initiative, which 

inspires the residents of Walker County. The 

design firm salvages and reuses often overlooked 

objects to create inexpensive houses that double as 

works of art. Phillips attended Sam Houston State 

University and his work helps local residents find 

the American dream. Another source of inspiration 

for Walker County citizens is one of its native sons: 

Richard Linklater. Linklater began as an 

independent filmmaker creating movies such as 

the Huntsville-inspired “Dazed and Confused” and 

“Slacker.” In 2010, Linklater screened a new 

movie, “Me and Orson Welles,” at the Old Town 

Theatre in Huntsville. The proceeds benefited the 

Huntsville Main Street Program, the Walker 

County Historical Commission and the Huntsville 

Community Theatre. 115 

The diversity of not only Walker County’s 

population but also its culture has increased 

greatly over the past forty years. Even while 

developing into a twenty-first century city, the 

residents of Walker County have been able to 

recognize and preserve their historical treasures 

for the generations to come. 

❖ 

The HEARTS Veteran Museum is 

dedicated to the heroes of the armed 

forces and preserves their memories. 



❖ 

Above: The Storybook House 

(foreground) and Charleston Home 

(background) are two examples 

of Dan Phillip’s building style. Both 

are located on University Avenue 

in Huntsville. 


Right: The historic downtown theater 

was recently restored and was site of a 

film premiere by Hollywood film 

director and native Huntsville son 

Richard Linklater. 



ENDNOTES 

Chapter I 

1 Elizabeth Cruce Alvarez, ed., Texas Almanac, 2004-2005 

(Dallas: Dallas Morning News, L.P., 2004), 285; John 

Leffler, “Walker County,” Handbook of Texas Online (HTO). 

2 Logan McNatt, et. al., Archeological Survey and History of 

Huntsville State Park, Walker County Texas (Austin: Texas 

Parks and Wildlife Department, Cultural Resources 

Program, 2001), 13; Dee Ann Story, et.al., “Cultural History 

of the Native Americans,” in The Archeology and 

Bioarcheology of the Gulf Coastal Plain (Fayetteville: Arkansas 

Archeological Survey, 1990), 163-366. 

3 Anastase Douay’s account may be found in Christian Le 

Clercq, First Establishment of the Faith in New France, 

Volume II, trans. John Gilmary Shea (New York: John G. 

Shea, 1881), 241; John L. Baldwin, “Early History of 

Walker Co., Texas,” (Master’s Thesis, Sam Houston State 

University, 1954), 1-15; W. W. Newcomb, Jr., The Indians of 

Texas: From Prehistoric to Modern Times (Austin: University 

of Texas Press, 1961), 23, 280-291. 

4 Andree F. Sjoberg, “The Bidai Indians of Southeastern 

Texas,” Southwestern Journal of Anthropology, Vol. 7, No. 4 

(Winter, 1951), 391-400; Lawrence C. Aten, Indians of the 

Upper Texas Coast (New York: Academic Press, 1983), 37- 

38, 47-52, 308-310; Travels in the Interior Parts of 

America; Communicating Discoveries Made in Exploring the 

Missouri, Red River and Washita by Captains Lewis and Clark, 

Doctor Sibley, and Mr. Dubar (London: J.G. Barnard, 1807), 

43; Jean Louis Berlandier, The Indians of Texas in 1830, ed. 

John C. Ewers, trans. Patricia Reading Leclercq 

(Washington D.C., Smithsonian Institution Press, 1969), 

107-108. 

5 On Moscoso’s expedition see, William C. Foster, Historic 

Native Peoples of Texas (Austin: University of Texas Press, 

2008), 26-27. 

6 A complete historiographical review of the debate over La 

Salle’s journey through Texas may be found in William C. 

Foster, ed., Johanna S. Warren, trans., The La Salle 

Expedition to Texas: The Journal of Henri Joutel, 1684-1687 

(Austin: Texas State Historical Association, 1998), 30-48. 

7 Herbert Eugene Bolton, Texas in the Middle Eighteenth 

Century: Studies in Spanish Colonial History and Administration 

(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1915; rpt., Austin: 

University of Texas Press, 1970), 405-431. 

8 John W. Thomason, “Huntsville,” in D’Anne McAdams 

Crews, ed., Huntsville and Walker County, Texas: A 

Bicentennial History (Huntsville, Texas: Sam Houston State 

University Press, 1976), 3-16; Harry F. Estill, “The Old 

Town of Huntsville,” The Quarterly of the Texas State 

Historical Association 3 (1900): 265-78. 

9 Estill, “The Old Town of Huntsville,” 265-78. 

10 Vernon Cleveland Fitzgerald Schuder, “A History of 

Cincinnati,” in Huntsville and Walker County, Texas, 513- 

524; Gerald L. Holder, “Cincinnati, Texas,” HTO; Leffler, 

“Walker County.” 

11 Willie Powell Costilow, “The ‘Formative’ Years of Walker 

County,” in Huntsville and Walker County, Texas, 321-329; 

Leffler, “Walker County,” HTO. 

Chapter II 

12 Bureau of the Census, Seventh Census of the United States, 

1850, Texas, Table 11, “Agriculture, farms and implements, 

stock, products, home, manufacturers,” 515-517; Bureau 

of the Census, Eighth Census of the United States, 1860, 

Texas, “Agriculture of the United States,” 149-150. 

13 James L. Hailey, “Old Carolina, TX,” HTO. 

14 James L. Hailey, “Tuscaloosa, TX,” HTO. 

15 Christopher Long, “Newport, TX (Trinity County),” HTO. 

16 James L. Hailey, “Crabb’s Prairie, TX,” HTO. 

17 James L. Hailey, “Shepherd’s Valley, TX,” HTO. 

18 Gerald L. Holder, “Waverly, TX,” HTO. 

19 Thomason, “Huntsville,” Huntsville and Walker County, 

Texas: A Bicentennial History; Donald R. Walker, A 

Frontier Texas Mercantile: The History of Gibbs Brothers 

and Company, Huntsville, 1841-1940 (Huntsville: Texas 

Review Press, 1997); Thomas W. Cutrer, “Robert Goodloe 

Smither,” HTO. 

20 Langston Goree, “Goree, Thomas Jewett Family,” in Walker 

County Texas; A History, ed. Walker County Genealogical 

Society and Walker County Historical Commission (Dallas: 

Curtis Media Corp., 1986), 397-398. 

21 Estill, “The Old Town of Huntsville,” 274. 

22 Dan Ferguson, “Austin College in Huntsville,” The 

Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 53 No. 4 (Apr., 

1950): 400. 

23 “Andrew Female College,” HTO. 

24 Donald R. Walker, “Texas State Penitentiary at Huntsville,” 

HTO. 

25 Randolph B. Campbell, Gone to Texas: A History of the Lone 

Star State (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 211. 

26 Texas Almanac, 1859 (Denton, Texas: Texas State Historical 

Association, 1860), 204-207; Ralph A. Wooster, “Wealthy 

Texans, 1860,” The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Vol. 

71, No. 2 (Oct., 1967): 163-180; James L. Hailey, 

“Thomason, Joshua Allen,” HTO. 

E n d n o t e s ✦ 5 5

27 Patricia Smith Prather and Jane Clements Monday, From Slave 

to Statesman: The Legacy of Joshua Houston, Servant to Sam 

Houston (Denton: University of North Texas Press, 1993), 38. 

28 Randolph B. Campbell, “Slavery,” HTO. 

Chapter III 

29 Randolph Campbell, Sam Houston and the American 

Southwest (New York: Longman, 2002), 179; Edward R. 

Maher, Jr., “Sam Houston and Secession,” The Southwestern 

Historical Quarterly 55 (April 1952): 448-458. 

30 Texas Almanac, 1859, (Denton, Texas: Texas State Historical 

Association, 1860), 204-207; Ralph A. Wooster, “Wealthy 

Texans, 1860,” The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Vol. 

71, No. 2 (Oct., 1967): 163-180. 

31 Sam Houston to H.M. Watkins and others, November 20, 

1860, in Amelia W. Williams and Eugene C. Baker, eds., 

Writings of Sam Houston (Austin: University of Texas Press, 

1943), 8: 192-197. 

32 Maher, “Sam Houston and Secession,” 453-455; John H. 

Reagan, “A Conversation with Governor Houston,” The 

Quarterly of the Texas State Historical Association 3 (1900): 280. 

33 Ernest William Winkler, ed., Journal of the Secession 

Convention of Texas, 1861 (Austin: Austin Printing 

Company, 1912); Reginald G. Jayne, “Martial Law in 

Reconstruction Texas,” (Master’s Thesis, Sam Houston State 

University, 2005), 40. 

34 “Civil War” folder, WCHC Records, County Annex; 

Thomas W. Cutrer, "Branch, Anthony Martin,” HTO. 


“Gillaspie, James,” HTO; Brett Derbes and Stephanie P. 

Niemeyer, "Elmore, Henry Marshall,” HTO. 

36 “Civil War” and “James T. Hunter” folders, WCHC Records, 

County Annex. 


Langston Goree, “Goree, Thomas Jewett Family,” in Walker 

County Texas; A History, 397-98; Langston James Goree V 

and Deborah Bloys Hardin, “Goree, Thomas Jewett,” HTO. 

38 Donald R. Walker, Penology for Profit (College Station: Texas 

A&M University Press, 1988), 16-17; Mary E. Rainey to 

Nelda Woodall, September 15, 1986, in “Civil War” folder, 

WCHC Records, County Annex. 

39 Prather and Monday, From Slave to Statesman, 77-126. 

40 “The Great Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1867,” The Huntsville 

Item, July 5, 1956; Henri Noordberg, “The Yellow Fever 

Epidemic of 1867 at Huntsville, Texas,” Yellow Fever 

Vertical File, Thomason Room, Newton Gresham Library, 


41 James Smallwood, Murder and Mayhem: The War of 

Reconstruction in Texas (College Station: Texas A & M 

University Press), 2003. 

42 Jayne, “Martial Law In Reconstructionist Texas,” 1, 52. 

Chapter IV 

43 James L. Hailey, “New Waverly, Texas,” HTO. 

44 Logan Wilson, “A Sociological Study of Huntsville, TX,” 

(Master’s Thesis, University of Texas, 1927), 44-45; James 

L. Hailey, “Phelps, TX,” HTO. 

45 James L. Hailey, “Dodge, TX (Walker County),” HTO. 

46 James L. Hailey, “Riverside, Texas (Walker County),” HTO. 

47 Alan W. Garrett, “Teacher Education,” HTO. 

48 Joe L. Clark and Nancy Beck Young, “Sam Houston State 

University,” HTO. 

49 Mrs. Davis Cox, Sam Houston Normal Institute and Historic 

Huntsville Through a Camera (Huntsville, TX, 1899), 5; 

Garrett, “Teacher Education,” HTO. 

50 Ty Cashion, Sam Houston State University: An Institutional 

Memory, 1879-2004 (Huntsville: Texas Review Press, 2004), 2. 

51 Ibid., 4. 

52 Ibid., 8. 

53 Ibid., 15. 

54 Ibid., 14; “Baldwin, Joseph,” HTO. 

55 Cashion, Sam Houston State University, 21. 

56 Ibid., 35. 

57 Ibid., 14. 

58 Jeffrey L. Littlejohn, Huntsville (Charleston, SC: Arcadia 

Pub., 2009), 117. 

59 Ibid., 74-75. 

60 Gary Price, “Ball, Thomas Henry [1859-1944],” HTO. 

Chapter V 

61 Jeffrey L. Littlejohn, “From Fitzhugh to Foster: Family 

Stories and the Founding of the Houston Chronicle,” manuscript 

in editor’s possession. 

62 Judith N. McArthur, Minnie Fisher Cunningham: A 

Suffragist’s Life in Politics (New York: Oxford University 

Press, 2005), 23; Patricia Ellen Cunningham, “Bonnet in 

the Ring: Minnie Fisher Cunningham’s Campaign for 

Governor of Texas in 1944” in Women and Texas History: 

Selected Essays, ed. Fane Downs and Nancy Baker Jones 

(Austin: Texas State Historical Association, 1993), 105. 

63 Thomas Michael Parrish. “This Species of Slave Labor: The 

Convict leave System in Texas, 1871-1914” (Master’s 

Thesis, Baylor University. 1976), 1. 

64 Robert Perkinson, Texas Tough: The Rise of America’s Prison 

Empire (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2010), 134. 

65 Bettie Hayman. “A Short History of Walker County, 1860- 

1942” (Master’s Thesis, Sam Houston State University, 

1942); Cheryl Spencer, “Henry Carr Pritchett,” Musings 

from Sam Houston’s Stomping Grounds, April 2, 2007; Paul 

Culp, “The Philanthropist and the Normal” Musings from 

Sam Houston’s Stomping Grounds; Beatrice Craig, Semi- 

Centennial Scrapbook, Thomason Room, Newton Gresham 

Library, Sam Houston State University. 


66 Naomi Lede, Samuel W. Houston and His Contemporaries: A 

Comprehensive History of the Origin, Growth, and Development of 

the Black Educational Movement in Huntsville and Walker County 

(Houston: Pha Green Printing, 1981); Jeffrey L. Littlejohn, 

“Samuel Walker Houston and the African American Training 

School at Galilee,” http://www.studythepast.com/democracy 

/samuel_walker_houston_home.htm; Prather and Monday, 

From Slave to Statesman; Naomi W. Lede, Pathfinders: A History 

of the Pioneering Efforts of African Americans Huntsville, Walker 

County, Texas (Virginia Beach: Walsworth Publishing, 2004). 

67 “Sam Houston, Texan,” Bluffton Chronicle, October 27, 

1909, 2; William Jennings Bryan, “General Sam Houston,” 

The Commoner, May 5, 1911, 2-4. 

68 “M’Adoo Appeals to Texans for Support,” Dallas Morning 

News, June 6, 1917, 5. 

69 Charles L. Dwyer and Viva M. McComb, “Thomason, John 

William Jr.,” HTO. 

70 James Patton, “Looking Back to Armistice Day – 1918,” 

Huntsville Item, November 11, 2009, 3; Logan Wilson, “A 

Sociological Study of Huntsville, Texas” (Master’s Thesis, 

Sam Houston State University, 1927), 38-41, 80; “Whites 

Kill Six Negroes. Mother and Five Sons Dead After Battle 

with Posse,” New York Times, June 2, 1918; “Heathen, 

Hellish, Hunnish Huntsville’s Horrors: Colored Americans 

in Walker County Victims of Wholesale Depredations,” The 

Houston Informer, June 7, 1919, 1; Keith J. Volanto, “Leaving 

the Land: Tenant and Sharecropper Displacement in Texas 

during the New Deal,” Social Science History 20 (1996), 535. 

71 “Road Work Promised to Begin Soon,” Huntsville Item, 

February 9, 1928; Wilson, 74. 

Chapter VI 

72 “Tax Bankruptcy,” Huntsville Item, September 8, 1932; “Tax 

Payers of Walker County Hold Meeting,” Huntsville Item, 

February 18, 1932; Texas Almanac, 1939-1940 (Dallas: A. 

H. Belo, 1939), 184; “Reduced Acreage of Cotton 

Advocated by Bankers,” Huntsville Item, February 20, 1930; 

“The Paramount Issue,” Huntsville Item, July 7, 1932. 

73 “Co-operative Effort A Way to Community Betterment,” 

Huntsville Item, April 17, 1930; “Business Picking Up in 

Huntsville,” Huntsville Item, December 4, 1930; “83-yearold 

man remembers,” Huntsville Item, March 25, 1988; 

Huntsville: The Mount Vernon of Texas (1938), Thomason 

Room, Newton Gresham Library, Sam Houston State 

University; “Oliphint Motor to be Host to Friends with 

Reception,” Huntsville Item, April 24, 1930. 

74 “Boettcher Lumber Co. Active Here in Saw Mill,” Huntsville 

Item, April 24, 1930; “Andrew Martinez Remembers 

Boettcher’s Mill, 1930-1945,” Walker County Stories, 

Thomason Room, Newton Gresham Library, Sam Houston 

State University. 

75 “Political Landslide,” Huntsville Item, November 17, 1932. 

76 Texas Almanac and State Industrial Guide 1936 (Dallas: 

Dallas News, 1936), 252. 

77 Matt Pederson, “Friends of Huntsville State Park 

Remember the 200 African-Americans Who Built a Local 

Landmark,” Huntsville Item, February 24, 2006. 

78 Harry McCormick, “Robert A. Josey’s Beautiful Gift to Boy 

Scouts,” Houston Press, June 18, 1934, B1. 

79 Mallory B. Randle, “Work Projects Administration,” HTO; 

Ronnie C. Tyler and Lawrence R. Murphy, editors, Slave 

Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States, 

From Interviews with Former Slaves: Texas Narratives 4 (St. 

Clair Shores, Mich: Scholarly Press, 1976), 144. 

80 Lee Simmons, Assignment Huntsville: Memoirs of a Texas 

Prison Official (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1957). 

81 Ibid; Sylvia Whitman, “Texas Prison Rodeo,” HTO. 


83 Glen M. Woodall, “Thousands in Huntsville Monday to Pay 

Homage to Memory of General Sam Houston,” Huntsville 

Item, March 5, 1936, 5. 

84 Cheryl Spencer, “First Lady Visits Huntsville,” Musings from 

Sam Houston’s Stomping Grounds. 

85 Jack W. Humphries, “The Old Town of Huntsville: The 

Perspectives of Estill and Thomason,” East Texas Historical 

Journal 23 (1985): 40. 


87 “New Waverly Marine Prisoner of the Japanese,” Huntsville 

Item, July 29, 1943. 

88 Gerald Etheredge, telephone interview by Sharla Miles, 

October 17, 2011. 

89 Cheryl Spencer, “Major Eula Fails Borneman (1908-1986),” 

Musings from Sam Houston’s Stomping Grounds; “Lt. Eula 

Fails, Nurse, Included Among the Missing,” Huntsville Item, 

July 29, 1943. 

90 Ralph Wooster, “East Texas in World War II,” East Texas 

Historical Journal 45 (2007): 41. 

Chapter VII 

91 “Births,” Huntsville Item, January 9, 1947. Texas Almanac, 

2010, http://www.texasalmanac.com/. 

92 “Polio Two Cases,” Huntsville Item, September 6, 1945; 

“Dedication of Hospital Wing Sunday Attracts 450,” 

Huntsville Item, January 27, 1965. 

93 Jesse L. Buffington, Economic Impact Study, Hunstville Texas, 

Bulletin No. 38, (College Station: Texas A&M University, 

1967); “Bond Election,” Huntsville Item, January 26, 1956; 

Editorial, Huntsville Item, May 8, 1956; Cheryl Spencer, 

interview by C. A. Carroll, September 15, 2011. 

94 Sarah Bartee, New Waverly Remembered, in Walker County 

Stories, Thomason Room, Newton Gresham Library, Sam 

Houston State University. 

E n d n o t e s ✦ 5 7

95 Bernadette Pruitt, Wendell Baker and His Historic Fight for 

Social Equality, manuscript in author’s possession, 6; 

Cashion, Sam Houston State University, 119; Amilcar 

Shabazz, Advancing Democracy, African Americans and the 

Struggle for Access and Equity in Higher Education in Texas 

(Chapel Hill, North Carolina: University Of North Carolina 

Press, 2004); Gary Zeller, The Integration of Huntsville 

Independent School District, 1954-1965, (Master’s Thesis, 

Sam Houston State University: 1994), 44. 

96 “Civil Rights Suit Filed Against Co. Commissioners,” 

Huntsville Item, November 8, 1963 

97 “Hey-You in Huntsville,” The Texas Observer, August 6, 1965. 

98 Frieda Koeninger interviewed by C. A. Carroll, October 4, 

2011; Shabazz, Advancing Democracy, 213-214. 

99 Tracy Gupton, “Dan Rather: From the Piney Woods to 

Broadway,” The Raven, 1:3 (1981). 

100 Cashion, Sam Houston State University, 128-130. 

Chapter VIII 

101 James Patton interview with Meredith A. Miller-Austin, 

October 24, 2011. 

102 Cashion, Sam Houston State University, 135-136. 

103 Ibid., 142. 

104 Cashion, 152; http://www.shsu.edu/about/. 

105 William T. Harper, Eleven Days in Hell: 1974 Carrasco Prison 

Siege at Huntsville, TX (Denton: University of North Texas 

Press, 2004); “Prisons: Blood Hostages,” Time Magazine, 

August 12, 1974. 

106 Nelda Woodall, “Hospitality House Ready for Families of 

Prisoners,” Huntsville Item, August 16, 1986. 

107 Lee Ann Neill, “Rodeo Demise Loss to Clubs,” The Houstonian, 

Thomason Room, Newton Gresham Library, Sam Houston 

State University; “Corrections Board Member Urges End to 53- 

year-old Rodeo,” Huntsville Item, November 19, 1984. 

108 Walker County History, http://www.walkercountyhistory.org/ 

about.php; Tony Pilkington, “Historical Home Site of 

Meeting,” Huntsville Morning News, February 20, 1984. 

109 Samuel Walker Houston National Alumni Association 

Pamphlet. Special Collections, Thomason Room, Newton 

Gresham Library, Sam Houston State University. 

110 Paul Sturrock, “Creating a Colossus.” Huntsville Item. 

Special Collections, Thomason Room, Newton Gresham 

Library, Sam Houston State University; Melony Closs, “First 

Baptist pastor to deliver ‘Big Sam’ Invocation,” Huntsville 

Item, October 15, 1994. 

111 Tom Waddill, “A Win For the Wynn,” Huntsville Item, May 

2003; “Historical marker to be unveiled at ‘Cabin on the 

Square’,” Huntsville Item, February 27, 2008; “Historical 

marker to be unveiled at ‘Cabin on the Square’,” Huntsville 

Item, February 27, 2008. 

112 Jenna Jackson, “TDCJ Employees Raise $300,000 for 

Museum,” Huntsville Item, May 17, 1997; “HEARTS Veterans 

Museum - The HEARTS Story.” http://www.heartsmuseum.com/heartsstory.php; 

Kristin Edwards, “HEARTS 

Museum Gets Help with $2M Grant,” Huntsville Item, June 

28, 2007. 

113 Leslie Howland, “Hurricane Rita: One Year Later,” 

Huntsville Item, September 23, 2006; Nell Miller Smith 

interviewed by Meredith Austin, September 15, 2011; 

Matthew Jackson, “Elkins Lake Resident Killed When Tree 

Hits Home,” Huntsville Item, September 13, 2008. 

114 Martha Binig, “Hospital Getting $750,000 Scanner,” 

Huntsville Item, August 1, 1983; “Ceremony Marks Hospital 

Expansion,” Huntsville Item, March 30, 1983; Jennifer 

LeFebvre, “Imaging Device Draws HMH to Cutting Edge,” 

Huntsville Item, July 7, 1993. 

115 Patricia C. Johnson, “Dan Phillips Not Only Builds 

Delightful, Affordable Houses from Other People's 

Discards, He’s also been Known to Finance Them for 

Buyers,” Houston Chronicle, January 28, 2009; Tom Waddill, 

“Three Huntsville Residents File Suit Over Negative 

Resemblances in Popular Cult Film,” Huntsville Item, 

October 12, 2004. 


SHARING THE HERITAGE 

H i s t o r i c p r o f i l e s o f b u s i n e s s e s , o r g a n i z a t i o n s , a n d 

f a m i l i e s t h a t h a v e c o n t r i b u t e d t o 

t h e d e v e l o p m e n t a n d e c o n o m i c b a s e o f 

H u n t s v i l l e a n d W a l k e r C o u n t y 

Huntsville Memorial Hospital ...........................................................6 0 

Elkins Lake Recreational Corporation ................................................6 4 

Community Service Credit Union .......................................................6 6 

McCaffety Electric Co., Inc. .............................................................6 8 

First National Bank of Huntsville ......................................................7 0 

Comfort Suites–Huntsville ................................................................7 2 

Bethy Creek Resorts ........................................................................7 4 

Huntsville-Walker County Chamber of Commerce .................................7 5 

Candyce Farris Dixon, CPA ..............................................................7 6 

Learning Rx ...................................................................................7 7 

Charles W. Monday, Jr., M.D., P.A. ....................................................7 8 

Pete Johnson Towing & Transportation Service .....................................7 9 

Smither, Martin, Henderson & Blazek, P.C. .........................................8 0 

Walker County Title Company ...........................................................8 1 

Sam Houston Cancer Center .............................................................8 2 

Walker County Ace Hardware ...........................................................8 3 

Sam Houston State University ...........................................................8 4 

University Cancer Center Huntsville ..................................................8 5 

Huntsville Independent School District ...............................................8 6 

The Whistler Bed and Breakfast ........................................................8 7 

SPECIAL 

THANKS TO 

Atkinson Toyota 

Madisonville 

S h a r i n g t h e H e r i t a g e ✦ 5 9

HUNTSVILLE 

MEMORIAL 

HOSPITAL 

Like so many hospitals of earlier days, 

Huntsville Memorial Hospital chose its name to 

honor the men and women—the heroes of 

World War I—who served the country during 

that time. Although the name has remained the 

same, inside its doors, much has been changed. 

Huntsville Memorial Hospital is a 123 bed, 

Joint Commission-accredited, not-for-profit 

acute care community hospital with a 

twenty-four hour, level-four emergency center. 

Since 1927 it has provided charitable 

healthcare services, delivering quality healthcare 

to the residents of Walker County and the 

surrounding communities. 

In keeping with the original charter of 

April 4, 1927, when it opened its doors, the 

purpose was to provide “benevolent and 

charitable” services for the sick, infirm, and 

afflicted residents of Walker County through 

the establishment, maintenance, support and 

operation of a hospital. Today, it continues that 

mission by delivering outstanding healthcare 

in a professional state-of-the-art facility for all. 

The entire staff is truly dedicated to caring for 

people. Physicians, nurses and ancillary staff members 

believe that caring for people is the foundation 

of everything Huntsville Memorial does. 

Management and staff say it is vital that every 

patient, their family members, and visitors be 

treated with integrity and honesty. They anticipate 

and accommodate customers’ needs; and, believe 

in promoting a culture of safety throughout the 

institution. Huntsville Memorial Hospital’s vision 

says it best: Huntsville Memorial will be the institution 

of choice by residents of Walker County and 

the surrounding area for their healthcare needs. 

The hospital will be a leader in efficiently and continually 

improving the economics, accessibility, 

and quality of healthcare in Walker County. 

With that purpose in mind, the hospital in 

2009 implemented a unique win-win opportunity 

for patients and providers through a hospital 

co-management effort. “The model unites 

everyone’s goals. The unique aspect of the 

model is that primary care physicians and 

specialists are part of the co-management team,” 


according to Sally Nelson, chief executive officer 

(CEO). “We decided to launch the effort because 

hospitals have routinely been beset with years of 

misaligned priorities and poor communication 

between community doctors and hospital officials. 

Our physicians agreed that the model was 

necessary in order to provide the community 

with the highest quality healthcare,” and it is 

accomplishing just that, she adds. 

Huntsville Memorial operates under a close 

team of leaders known as the executive team. 

Led by Nelson as CEO, others include Shannon 

Brown, chief financial officer, Dr. David Ficklen, 

chief medical officer; and Donna Stewart, chief 

patient care services officer. 

While they are at the helm, they are under the 

leadership of a board of directors who are nominated 

from the professional community, as well 

as the community-at-large. David Prier, M. D., is 

chairman of the board and John Knight, M. D., is 

chief of staff. Other board members are Nancy 

Gaertner, Don Johnson, Morris Johnson, vice 

president; Wayne Scott, Rosa Valles, Dana 

Gibson, Ph.D., Urmil Shukla, M. D., William 

Durham, Helen Watkins, Ph.D., Sam Burris, and 

Tim Deahl, M. D. 

While the history of Huntsville Memorial 

Hospital is well documented, it is important 

that HMH stays competitive with other healthcare 

facilities. It does that by keeping up- 


to-date with industry trends, equipment and 

procedures to make a patient’s hospital stay a 

positive one. In November 2008, it undertook 

a rebranding effort and launched a new 

advertising campaign to communicate innovative 

services and changes to better serve the 

surrounding community now and in the future. 

HMH today delivers key specialties and 

services to fulfill the healthcare needs of 

the community with advanced technology 

and the professional expertise of its board 

certified physicians. From physical therapy 

and imaging, to laparoscopic surgery and 

wound care, HMH offers cutting-edge 

programs and services in both an inpatient 

and outpatient environment. 

“We have rebranded the hospital’s pledge, 

Down to earth and up to the minute to 

demonstrate that we offer an even higher 

quality of care. The over-arching message 

focuses on the fact that the hospital is 

innovative in its approach to providing the 

services right here in our community; and, we 

are also emphasizing the personal care and 

attention that patients want and expect from 

a community hospital,” says Calli Dretke, 

director of marketing. 

Huntsville Memorial Hospital has a long 

and interesting chronology of events. For 

instance, twenty-two years after its charter, 

it added fifty beds. The positive changes 

through the years include: 

1955—The Huntsville Memorial Hospital 

Auxiliary is chartered. 

1964—The W. T. Robinson, Sr., Wing is 

built, providing an additional thirty beds. 

1965—The convalescent unit is integrated 

into the hospital. 

1966—Joe G. Davis School of Vocational 

Nursing hosts the first class of nursing students. 

1970—The hospital board begins advocating 

the establishment of a hospital district. 

1975—Voters approve the Walker County 

Hospital District. 

1976—The Walker County Hospital District 

and Hospital Corporation of America (HCA) 

form an agreement and Huntsville Memorial 

Hospital becomes an HCA-managed facility. 

1977—Huntsville Memorial Hospital breaks 

ground for a new 123,000 square foot facility, 

opening in June of 1979. 

1985—Huntsville Memorial Hospital begins a 

$2.5 million expansion of the surgery department. 

1992—The HMH Medical Clinic is established 

for primary care in the county. 

1997—A $1.5 million expansion begins 

to house the Center for Rehabilitation and 

other services 

1998—HMH opens the Heritage Mental 

Health Program for senior adults. 

The turn-of-the-century is still inviting 

change—all for the well-being of community 

residents. Among them are: 

2003—HMH completes a 4,500 square-foot 

expansion to the radiology department to 

provide additional space for state-of-the-art 

magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and computerized 

tomography (CT) scan equipment. 

2004—HMH becomes an affiliate of Memorial 

Hermann Healthcare System. 

2005—HMH becomes a tobacco-free campus. 

2005—HMH opens a six-bed inpatient 

Rehabilitation Unit; and HMH renovates 

Women’s Health Unit and five birthing suites 

with contemporary furnishings. 

2007—HMH received Quality Award from 

the Joint Commission; the hospital welcomes 

CEO Sally I. Nelson. 

2008—Huntsville Memorial Hospital 

begins a rebranding campaign; HMH’s Wound 

Care Center opens; HMH Forensic Nursing 

Unit opens. 

2009—HMH’s Express Admit Unit opens; 

Nuclear Medicine (NM) remodeled to include 

Stress Room. Began providing NM stress tests 

on weekends; First fully digital radiographic 

and fluoroscopic room installed; HMH 

institutes co-management program aligning 

physicians with hospital; HMH recruits 

pulmonologist, Dr. Sudhir Sehgal into 501 (a) 

practice; HMH establishes chief medical officer 

(CMO) position, with Dr. David Ficklin 

becoming the first CMO; and Heritage 

Outpatient Counseling expands by adding the 

C.A.R.E. (Chemical Addiction Recovery and 

Education) program. 

2010—Medical Economics magazine features 

Huntsville as the “best town you never heard 

of” in its cover story on America’s best places 

to practice medicine; Ability to have several 

radiologists view and read x-rays remotely; 

HMH Acquires 64-slice CT Scanner; HMH 


installs digital mammography system; Opened 

remodeled Mammography area, and radiology 

waiting area funded by HMH volunteers; 

began offering Cardiac CT Angiography; 

HMH completed $1.4 million renovation and 

improvement project for patient rooms; 

HMH receives Pink Ribbon Facility distinction; 

HMH receives Journey of Improvement award 

twice from Press Ganey for sustained improvement 

in patient satisfaction; Clinical Decision 

Unit opens; HMH Sports Medicine opens; 

Assistant Administrator, Tripp Montalbo, 

becomes HMH’s first chief operating officer; 

and welcomes new chief nursing officer, 

Donna Steward, RN, Med, MBA. 

2011—HMH purchased cardiac package for 

64-slice CT scanner; recruits nephrologist. 

Dr. Dave Khurana, into 501 (2) practice; 

receives Key Quality Award from The Joint 

Commission; and is voted as a top 100 workplace 

by the Houston Chronicle; teams up with 

Sam Houston State University as the official 

healthcare provider for SHSU athletics. 

2012—HMH opens a medical clinic in 

Madisonville, Texas; teams up with Orthopedic 

surgeons, Dr. Dalton Health III, and Dr. Jesse 

Ward, to add depth into 501(2) practice; 

receives Hospital Safety Score A award; recruits 

OB/GYN, Dr. Mercedes Goebel and Internal 

Medicine, Dr. Prasada Nalluri into 501 (2) 

practice; breaks ground on free-standing 

Emergency and Imaging Center in Madisonville; 

and receives the Key Quality Award from the 

Joint Commission two consecutive years. 


ELKINS LAKE 

RECREATION 

CORPORATION 

It has often been said that there is “no place like 

home,” and members of Elkins Lake Recreation 

Corporation would be the first to agree. 

Residents of Elkins Lake’s residential community 

relish the location, which is the home of 

Sam Houston State University, sixty-five miles 

north of Houston and 175 miles south of Dallas. 

As such, they are close enough to appreciate the 

perks of “big city” entertainment such as theatre, 

ballet, and orchestral events; yet, all the while, 

enjoying the day-to-day, care-free lifestyle 

among the rolling hills and wooded landscape. 

It is the Elkins Lake Recreation Corporation’s 

various activities that people find inviting. The 

corporation is a private club with welcoming 

neighbors and all the comforts of home. 

Residents view it as a fun community, and agree 

that there is something for everyone—no matter 

what their age or preference for recreational and 

social activities. 

While catching the “big one” in a nearby lake 

may appeal to some, others may find a round of 

golf more to their liking on the twenty-seven 

hole championship course. Some may find the 

swimming pools or tennis courts more enticing. 

Still, there are others who would rather sit on 

their front porches, visiting with neighbors, 

playing a game of gin rummy, or simply enjoying 

the peaceful environment. 

The community is named for Judge James 

Elkins, who began his law career in Huntsville 

in 1903, and became one of Houston’s most 

prominent attorneys. In 1930, he purchased 

twenty acres of land as a personal retreat, establishing 

the Elkins Lake property, and began 

clearing and beautifying the property. He also 

bought about sixteen to twenty properties that 

year, and consolidated them into one large tract 

of land, now a 1,000-acre development. 

In 1936, the Judge built the Manor House 

with cypress logs he received from a Lufkin 

sawmill owner as payment for defending his 

son against a murder charge. The historic home 

was a place where Texas-sized deals were made, 

and became the center for dining and entertainment 

in the Elkins Lake development. 

Eventually, J. B. Belin, Jr., purchased the 

property from Judge Elkins and began further 

development of the community. In 1969 the 

Secretary of State issued a certificate of 

incorporation to Elkins Lake Recreation 

Corporation. At that time, the developer 

controlled the affairs of the community, which 

was one of four developments in the Quad 

Rec Club. Others were April Sound, Westwood 

Shores, and Hilltop Lakes. At that time, Judge 

Elkins’ first home was used as the original 

development office. 


In 1985 the 1,200 property owners assumed 

control of Elkins Lake Recreation Corporation. 

Today, they continue to serve as the governing 

body. An elected board of directors, comprised 

entirely of property owners, determines the affairs 

and future of the community. After many years of 

member management, the Elkins Lake community 

was officially incorporated into the City of 

Huntsville through an annexation effort in 1994. 

Even though Elkins Lake is located within 

the city limits, most of the adjacent property is 

designated as National Forest and state park 

land. Because of these “protected borders,” 

Elkins Lake will always seem like the escape to 

nature that once drew Judge Elkins to the area. 

Today, it remains a society of good neighbors 

with amenities, activities, and enrichment for 

everyone. Often are the times, when residents 

come together as friends and neighbors to 

paint, play cards, exercise, and study—or, just 

to sit and visit. 

Judge Elkins would be proud to know that 

his original vision of building a place to live 

and relax, spend time with friends, have fun, 

and enjoy the beautiful, natural surroundings 

has been realized. 


COMMUNITY 

SERVICE 

CREDIT UNION 

❖ 

Above: Newly remodeled exterior of 

the main office on FM 2821. 

Below: Sam South Location; CSCU 

added a branch on the south side of 

Huntsville, Texas in 2008. 

Imagine walking past a prison guard to 

secure a loan or conduct other financial business. 

That is exactly what employees of the 

Texas Prison System did when the Texas Prison 

Employees Credit Union was established nearly 

sixty years ago. The fledgling credit union was 

located inside the Huntsville (Walls) Unit. 

In 1953, W. H. Gaston, director of the Texas 

Prison System, contacted O. B. Ellis, general 

manager of the System, expressing concern over 

the problem of assignments of salary 

warrants from one employee to another. 

In his letter, Gaston suggested the 

formation of a credit union to better 

assist employees with their financial 

needs. He also suggested a board of 

directors to oversee the savings and loan 

transactions against money earned as 

pay; and, further stated that investors 

were ready to start such an institution. 

Ellis granted approval, but a second 

approval was required from the Texas 

Prison Board because the venture would 

involve Texas Prison System employees 

as volunteers. Permission was granted 

upon receipt of a letter that outlined the 

credit union’s organization and various 

procedures about how system employees, 

as volunteers, would conduct credit 

union transactions and business. 

The organization was chartered April 

16, 1954 by the Department of Banking. 

At that time, there were only fifty-five 

members, and a mere $10,115 in shares. 

Gaston was named manager. 


In the early days, membership was restricted 

to employees of the Texas Prison System; however, 

in 1988, it was extended to include individuals 

who were not employed by the system. 

Membership was opened to anyone who 

worked or resided within Walker County and 

later extended to include those who worship or 

attend school in Walker County, as well as their 

family members. 

A name change took place New Year’s Day, 

1958, whereby the Texas Prison Employees 

Credit Union became the Department of 

Corrections Employees Credit Union (DOCE- 

CU). It was changed again, in 1988, to 

Community Service Credit Union (CSCU) to 

reflect the expanded field of membership. 

The credit union has grown exponentially 

through the years and now offers services provided 

by most banks; however, unlike banks, it 

offers members ease of access and better fiduciary 

rates. Today, it provides savings and checking 

accounts, commercial accounts, certificate 

accounts, money market accounts, loans, 

ATM cards, Visa check cards, Visa credit cards, 

Tele-Access, CSCU online, CSCU Bill Payers, 

CSCU Mobile, e-statements, direct deposit, 

overdraft protection, wire transfers, Travelers 

Cheques, money orders, and even gift cards. 

Under the direction of financial-savvy individuals, 

CSCU now boasts twenty-eight fulltime 

employees and 8,829 members. Assets 

have increased steadily from $10,000 during 

the founding year, to $534,000 in 1962; and hit 

the million dollar mark in 1984, with $12 million 

in assets. The turn of the century helped 

the financial institution realize $32 million with 

9,648 members. As of July 2011, assets grew to 

more than $77 million with 8,642 members. 

Community Service Credit Union’s mission 

is to promote and provide complete financial 

services to meet the needs of individual members; 

continually improve present services and 

develop new services to better serve the financial 

needs of its membership. CSCU pledges 

to continually research and develop programs 

to satisfy the needs of its members as their 

financial situations change; and provide welltrained, 

sensitive representatives to counsel and 

assist members in improving their economic 

and social position. It pledges to adhere to 

sound financial practices for maintaining a 

healthy and viable capital structure. 

CSCU is headquartered at 250 FM 2821 West 

with the Sam South Branch located at 2432 Sam 

Houston Avenue in Huntsville, Texas. 

What is on the horizon for Community 

Service Credit Union? “We will continue to 

provide quality financial services that our 

members want and need; and we will educate 

consumers on the credit union business model 

as to why they should choose a credit union,” 

says Brenda Bass Hooker, president and CEO 

of Community Service Credit Union. 

❖ 

Above: Newly remodeled interior of 

the Main Office on FM 2821, 

complete with coffee bar and 

comfortable seating area. 

Left: Ca$h poses with a furry friend 

during the Christmas With Ca$h 

Celebration. Ca$h is available to 

make appearances at local schools 

or events. 


❖ 

MCCAFFETY 

ELECTRIC CO., 

INC. 

Above: Clockwise, starting from the 

top left, Eugene, Shirley, Pamela and 

Robert McCaffety, December 1966. 

The family in 2011. Standing, left to 

right, Jeremy Barnes, Danny Wilson, 

Eugene, Cody, Robert, Jason, and 

Tyler McCaffety. Sitting, left to right, 

Amanda Barnes, Lindsay Wilson, 

Pam Barnes, Shirley, Frankie, Trisha, 

and Lindsey McCaffety. Front, left to 

right, Ashley and Austin McCaffety. 

Like many who invent a product or start a 

business, Eugene McCaffety realized a need and 

responded to the challenge. 

While being raised in Walker County, 

Eugene McCaffety met Shirley Woods. In the 

winter of 1954, the two married and traveled 

many states, while he worked in the 

construction industry. He was working alone 

for Brown & Root one sweltering day in 

La Porte, Texas, knee deep in mud, and making 

$2.75 an hour. That is when he decided there 

must be a better way. He wanted to provide a 

better life for Shirley, his son Robert, and 

daughter Pamela. 

During a visit to Huntsville he learned of 

a need for electricians there. Aided by 

A. J. Beckham and Bill Jones the journey 

began. In December of 1962, Jim 

Cates helped Gene file the paperwork, 

formally establishing McCaffety Electric 

Company. Another friend, Mutt McMillan 

helped Eugene’s family move from 

Pasadena, Texas into a house rented 

from Doyle Walker. This home had a 

small garage that became Eugene’s first 

shop. A 1959 Chevy truck, a few tools 

and the drive to build a life here in 

Huntsville were the few items that started 

McCaffety Electric. With the help of 

many new friends and word-of-mouth 

advertising, the business began to grow. 

In 1967, Shirley opened what was to become 

the lighting showroom in a small area of the 

shop. Materials and supplies were delivered 

once or twice a month by Red Arrow or 

Missouri Pacific Freight Lines. The average 

pay was $2-$2.75 an hour and a service 

charge was $7.50 an hour. Often, payment 

was rendered by the exchange of a shovel, 

a wheelbarrow, or even a hot meal. As Eugene 

recalls, he was once offered an old pick-up 

truck as payment for electrical services. Eugene 


ecognizes the times that God’s hand made 

the difference and supplied their needs. One of 

his favorite sayings is “God helps those who 

help themselves.” 

In the late 1970s Eugene began the 

transition of handing the company over to his 

son Robert, now CEO. With determination, 

Robert took the reins and obtained his Master 

Electricians license in 1978, and Eugene retired 

in the early 1980s. Pamela joined the company 

in 1985 and serves as account executive today. 

Other family members joined the ranks, 

and currently of the third generation 

are: Vice President and Estimator Jason 

McCaffety, Branch Manager Cody McCaffety 

and Project Manager Jeremy Barnes. 

In February of 2003 McCaffety 

Electric was certified as a Historically 

Underutilized Business by the State of 

Texas. Today McCaffety Electric employs 

seventy to eighty electricians and office 

staff. They have expanded their service 

territory with two locations, the first 

location at 1711 Sycamore Avenue in 

Huntsville, where they house electrical 

supplies and a lighting showroom, 

managed by Frankie McCaffety who has 

been employed twenty-eight years with 

the company. The second and newest 

service location established in 2004, is at 

1610A North Frazier, in Conroe. Each 

location services a sixty mile radius 

with a well-trained staff. Licensed by 

the State of Texas for Electrical 

Contractors, McCaffety continues to 

provide these areas with licensed and 

bonded commercial, industrial and 

residential electrical work; from large 

construction projects, or remodeling 

and simple repairs. 

Reputations are developed over 

long periods of time. With fifty years 

of experience McCaffety Electric has 

built a reputation of quality, dedication 

and trust. Several electricians 

have been with McCaffety Electric 

almost twenty years, and many customers 

call and request them by 

name. Whether during the planning, 

designing or construction phase, 

clients have come to expect its commitment 

to quality. McCaffety Electric is ready, 

willing, and able to ensure its commitment to 

complete the job as well as offer their clients a 

wide variety of expertise and merchandise to 

fulfill every electrical need. 

The family gives the glory to God and 

appreciates every friend; employee and business 

associate that helped make McCaffety Electric 

Co., Inc. what it is today. 

For additional information, please visit 

www.mccaffetyelectric.com on the Internet. 

❖ 

Above: Don Barnes, family, best 

friend and employee. He passed away 

in 2010, he was an integral part of 

McCaffety Electric for thirty-seven 

years. Don and Pam married in 

July of 1982. 

Below: Eugene and Shirley McCaffety 

at their fiftieth wedding anniversary. 


FIRST NATIONAL 

BANK OF 

HUNTSVILLE 

On January 14, 1890, Gibbs National 

Bank—now First National Bank of Huntsville 

(FNBH)—opened its doors for business on the 

square. Prior to 1890, the Gibbs family had 

provided banking services to the citizens of 

Huntsville through the family mercantile business, 

which opened in 1841. Located on Cedar 

and Jackson Streets, now known as Eleventh 

Street and Sam Houston Avenue, this practice 

of “private banking” services largely consisted 

of safeguarding valuables in the store’s vault or 

carrying promissory notes from customers who 

repaid the note when their crop was harvested. 

General Sam Houston traded regularly in the 

Gibbs store, and thought so highly of Thomas 

Gibbs that he named him as an executor of 

his will. By the late 1880s, the Gibbs family 

acquired a national bank charter and the bank 

opened directly next door to the mercantile 

store, named in honor of Sandford Gibbs. His 

widow, Sallie Gibbs, was one of the founders of 

the bank. However, it was considered improper 

for a woman to lead a business, so she installed 

her two sons as the bank’s managers and ran 

the bank out of the public eye. At the time of 

Sallie’s Gibbs death in 1918, Gibbs National 

Bank was thriving and in 

solid condition. In 1923, recognizing 

its role as a community 

bank, the name was changed 

to First National Bank of 

Huntsville—a name that remains 

unchanged today. 

Despite the challenging economic 

times of the Great Depression in the 

1930s, First National Bank continued as a strong 

community bank, priding itself on helping customers 

with financial services. In 1936, when 

the bank was remodeled, a new seven ton vault 

with a seven foot door was installed, along with 

500 safety deposit boxes to better serve 

customers. In 1939, bank deposits exceeded 

$1 million for the first time. In 1940, First 

National Bank of Huntsville celebrated fifty 

years of banking in Walker County, and by 

the end of that decade, deposits exceeded $3 

million. The 1950s were a booming time of 

change. Customers shifted from 

cash to check writing; every 

check was handled entirely by 

hand. By the end of the decade, 

the bank had outgrown its original 

location and for the first 

time since its founding seventy 

years earlier, built and moved to 

a new building on Eleventh 

Street in July 1962. (Currently, 

the location of the Huntsville 

Police Department.) This building 

had the first drive-in window 

whereby transactions were 

couriered underground in pneumatic 

tubes. Customers and 

tellers viewed each other via 

two-way television screens. In 1964, the bank 

added a Trust Department, which continues to 

provide Trust services today. 

The building that housed First National Bank 

of Huntsville for a little over ten years was 

quickly outgrown, and in 1976, the bank once 

again broke ground to move to its third and current 

location. The new six story building, located 

on Eleventh Street once again, opened in 1977 and 

provided the bank with room for future growth. 

The drive-thru was, then, relocated and expanded 

to seven lanes providing the opportunity to continue 

to serve customers with expanded services. 


First National Bank of 

Huntsville passed several significant 

milestones during the 

1980s. In 1981, with new technology 

the bank installed 

Huntsville’s first Automated 

Teller machine (ATM). The 

decade also saw two new banks 

chartered and opened by FNBH: The First 

National Bank–South and First Madisonville 

National Bank. Additionally, FNBH opened 

the Convenience Center—the first branch 

banking facility in Texas. The bank reached 

$100 million in assets, and also opened the 

Motor Park location in 1986, a drive-thru 

to serve commercial customers with large 

deposits. In 1987, the bank launched a golf 

tournament: The Annual Lu Ellen Gibbs 

Invitational, benefitting the Sam Houston State 

University golf program. The tournament 

continues today, known as The First National 

Bank of Huntsville Masters Challenge, with 

proceeds benefitting the Lu Ellen Gibbs Golf 

Endowment at SHSU. 


COMFORT SUITES– 

HUNTSVILLE 

Local residents, as well as individuals traveling 

I-45 through Texas, feel as though the welcome 

mat is always out at Comfort Suites–Huntsville. 

And it is, according to Rikki and Joe Mann, 

owners. In fact, “Comfort is our most important 

asset,” says Joe. 

The couple opened the Choice Hotel near 

the Montgomery Road exit in 2007, and has not 

regretted it since. 

As part of the Akash Hotels International, 

Inc., the Comfort Suites-Huntsville all-suites 

hotel features reassurance and quality customer 

service throughout. From the time one enters 

the front door until checkout, the red carpet is 

always rolled out. 

A free breakfast of eggs, bacon, sausage, 

waffles, cereals, bread and pastries awaits guests 

in the morning. Topping that off is a steaming 

cup of coffee or tea and USA Today as well as the 

local paper. A conference room, accommodating 

thirty, is available for local and business meetings. 

Matthew Jones, general manager, says, “The 

athletic-minded will enjoy the fitness center with 

treadmill, stair-climber and weight machines.” 

The hotel is only minutes away from 

Sam Houston State University, Sam Houston 

National Forest, Sam Houston Statue Visitors 

Center, Huntsville State Park, and “just around 

the corner” from Education Service Center 

The hotel features fifty-nine suites for relaxing, 

entertaining or business; and, is equipped 

with iron, ironing board, microwave and 

refrigerator, wet bar, coffeemaker and hair 

dryer. Guests have their choice of king or 

queen-size beds; and a sleeper sofa is provided 

for the kids or extra person housed in the same 

room. In addition, there is a thirty-two inch 

plasma television, and a work area with 

complimentary Internet and Wi-Fi, providing 

“business as usual” for company travelers. 


“It doesn’t matter if guests are visiting for 

relaxation, entertainment or business, Comfort 

Suites–Huntsville is the welcomed location,” 

adds Jones. 


www.comfortsuites.com. 

Region VI. Other attractions include the Texas 

Prison Museum, HEARTS Veterans Museum, 

Historic Downtown Huntsville, and Olympic 

Gold Medal Gymnastics Trainer Bella Karolyi’s 

training facility. It is also headquarters for the 

Stan Musial Amateur World Series of Baseball. 


BETHY CREEK 

RESORTS 

For families who enjoy the beckoning call 

and ambience of the great outdoors, Bethy 

Creek Resort is the perfect spot for camping, 

picnicking and enjoying water sports. 

The peaceful atmosphere in Riverside, Texas’ 

Lake Livingston has been a welcoming site for 

weekend campers, vacationers, fishermen and 

boating enthusiasts for over forty years. 

In the 1950s, Basil (Sandy) Vincent and 

his wife Hazel became captivated by property 

they spotted in Polk County. Several years later, 

they learned that a lake was proposed for Polk, 

San Jacinto, Trinity and Walker Counties. It was 

the incentive they needed to begin purchasing 

waterfront property on what would become 

Lake Livingston. 

Upon Sandy’s retirement in 1968, the family 

moved from Houston to Onalaska and started 

a real estate development business. It was 

not until 1971; however, while driving around 

the lake, that Sandy spotted property that was 

being semi-developed in Riverside. At that 

point, he encouraged son Randell, and daughter-in-law 

Sayrah, to leave Houston and join the 

family business, buying a large amount of 

waterfront property. 

The vision to develop the property into 

a premier recreation was born. They continued 

developing the property, adding a 

campground and marina for locals and 

out-of-state visitors. 

Truly a family-owned venture with 

Randell, Jr., and wife Cindy joining them, 

it has grown into a premier recreation 

destination for families and children of 

all ages. 

Today, Bethy Creek Resort has recreational 

vehicle (RV) sites complete with 

electrical connections, grills and picnic 

tables. There are cabins, and picnic tables. 

For the fishing enthusiast, there is the lure 

of a lighted pier, boats and a lake stocked 

with bass, crappie and catfish. When not 

casting a rod, visitors may enjoy pedal 

boats, canoes and wakeboarding. There is 

even a wakeboarding camp for youth. 

At night, everyone can enjoy the sweet 

smells of the outdoors and the twinkling 

Texas stars overhead. Randell, Jr., says that 

Bethy Creek is the ideal place to forget 

everyday stress and enjoy life. “It’s been 

said many times—but, it really doesn’t get 

any better than this!” 


HUNTSVILLE– 

WALKER COUNTY 

CHAMBER OF 

COMMERCE 

An area’s business climate is often reflected 

in Chamber of Commerce efforts. Huntsville- 

Walker County Chamber is no exception. 

Even in the very early days of its organization, 

members rolled up their sleeves to hold 

the first Crop Contest and awarded $100 to 

John L. Books of Loma for producing the first 

bale of cotton. That was 1925. 

In 1963, the Chamber broke ground for 

its current location at 1327 Eleventh Street 

in Huntsville. Since then, the organization 

has grown to five fulltime employees and a 

membership of 510. 

Today, the Chamber operates on a number of 

basic principles as it looks toward the future. 

One is drawing upon member synergy—members 

accomplishing goals the Chamber could 

not do alone. It is a source for business contacts 

and referrals in two Leads exchange groups. 

It is involved in special events that build 

good relationships at its Small Business 

Networking Breakfasts and Business After 

Hours events. Volunteers’ further encourage 

networking opportunities at special events 

like the Trade Expo, Shot in the Dark Golf 

Tournament, Fair on the Square, Annual Gala 

and leadership luncheons. 

The Chamber’s goal is to develop existing 

businesses, recruit new businesses and 

strengthen economic growth. The Chamber is 

a daily source for business contacts and 

referrals from staff and other members. Also 

offered are Leads Exchange groups. 

As with any city, the Chamber plays a 

major role in tourism. The Chamber is often 

the first point of contact for marketing to, 

and hosting, local, national and international 

visitors. Tourism has an annual impact of over 

$88.8 million in Huntsville and Walker County. 

The Huntsville Leadership Institute has 

provided unique leadership training and 

opportunities for local citizens for over thirty 

years. In addition, Chamber Leadership has 

an active voice representing local business in 

local, state and national government. 

President Carol Smith says, “The Huntsville- 

Walker County Chamber is heavily involved 

with community causes such as Sam Houston 

State University, Boys and Girls Club of Walker 

County, the YMCA, and Walker County Fair 

Association, just to name a few.” 


CANDYCE FARRIS 

DIXON, CPA 

❖ 

Candyce Farris Dixon, CPA. 

Candyce Dixon’s professional success is built 

on the fiscal achievements that she helps 

businesses and individuals attain. As owner of 

Candyce Farris Dixon, CPA, she is dedicated to 

serving the financial needs of others. “Only 

when my clients are financially successful have 

I succeeded,” she says. 

After obtaining her accounting degree from 

Sam Houston State University in 1977, she 

began her career with a regional accounting firm 

in Huntsville. During her ten year tenure, she 

earned CPA certification and became a partner. 

It was there she decided to start a private practice, 

opening in 1988. “Working at a larger 

firm, I lost personal contact with individuals 

because of demands on my time. I wanted to 

return to personal service.” 

Her mission is to provide quality, accurate, 

and timely tax and financial reporting. “My goal 

is to serve my clients directly and personally, 

whether it is with accounting or tax needs. It is 

vital in today’s complex business world that I 

help them understand tax laws applicable to 

them and how to gauge financial indicators 

with direct impact on their businesses.” 

She provides tax preparation for individuals 

and all types of entities as well as full service 

accounting for businesses. Churches and nonprofits 

are assisted with budgeting and establishing 

fiscal policy and controls. 

Candyce is committed to Huntsville and 

Walker County, where her family’s roots date to 

the 1830s. She and her husband, Dale Dixon, 

have raised three children here; and in 2000, 

she created an after school program for elementary 

students. With the help of educators and 

volunteers, it has thrived and evolved into 

The Boys and Girls Club of Walker County. The 

flexibility of private practice and support 

of many of her clients allowed that to happen. 

“I consider it my most important contribution 

to Huntsville,” she says. Her commitment to the 

history and traditions of the community are 

further reflected by her office—the restored, 

historic Davis home on Avenue O. 


Lisa Branch’s passion and desire to help 

students who struggled with learning prompted 

her to research learning difficulties, and 

eventually, launch a new career as the co-owner 

of LearningRx-Huntsville. 

After twenty years of teaching, Branch saw 

students, who, even though they worked 

hard, studied diligently, and gave their best 

effort, was not successful in the classroom. 

That is when she began searching for 

answers and studying brain development. 

She received her first certification in brain 

research in 1999, and delved deeper into 

neuroscience and the “whys” of learning 

difficulties. In 2010, Branch heard about 

LearningRx, a national franchise with research 

to support claims that it could change the 

brain’s ability to process information, enabling 

learning to happen more efficiently. 

LearningRx focuses on weak cognitive 

skills—the underlying areas of the brain, 

which enable learning. “Addressing the root 

cause of learning difficulties 

allows us to see growth 

in IQ scores and classroom 

performance,” she says. 

The company has been 

successful in the areas of 

dyslexia, autism spectrum 

disorders, ADD/ADHD, 

traumatic brain injuries, 

stroke victims, and senior 

decline. College students 

and professional people 

also benefit from LearningRx 

by becoming faster processors 

of information. “We 

can help with almost any 

area that concerns the brain 

and its ability to process 

and learn information,” 

she adds. 

After studying and completing 

LearningRx’s franchise 

development system, 

Branch, co-owner Lisa 

Roberts, and Assistant 

Director Melissa Howe, 

were certified in Cognitive 

Brain Therapy. The business 

opened October 1, 

2010 with five clients 

receiving services and 

since, has served over fifty 

members of the community. 

“Our success is a great 

example of how provisions are made 

when individuals seek to follow God’s plan,” 

they agree. 

While focusing on clients in the Walker 

County area, LearningRx also serves the 

surrounding East Texas Region. Melissa Howe, 

Georgie Berry, and Courtney Givens comprise 

the core staff of LearningRx-Huntsville. 

They ensure that all fifteen employees and 

approximately forty clients are served based 

on the ideals upon which LearningRx 

was founded. 

❖ 

LEARNING RX 

Lisa Branch. 


❖ 

CHARLES W. 

MONDAY, JR., 

M.D., P.A. 

Charles W. Monday, Jr., M.D., P.A. 

Dr. Charles W. Monday, Jr., was born in 

Shreveport, Louisiana, in 1941, grew up in 

South Texas, and graduated University of 

Texas in 1962. He completed his medical 

degree at UT Galveston in 1966, surgical 

residency at Herman Hospital in1971, and 

military service in the U.S. Army Medical Corps 

in 1973. 

Dr. Monday opened his medical practice in 

Huntsville in the specialty of general surgery 

in 1973 at Avenue O and Thirteenth Street. 

He was only one half block from Huntsville 

Memorial Hospital which was located at the 

corner of Eleventh Street and Avenue O and 

later became Ella Smither Geriatric Facility. 

When he came to Huntsville there was only 

one other Board Certified referred specialist 

in town and that was Dr. Raymond Blalock. 

He opened his practice with Susan Smither 

Tarpey who became his practice office 

manager and remained for thirty-eight years. 

For the next fifteen years, Dr. Monday 

practiced actively in Huntsville, Madisonville 

and Trinity often driving over one hundred 

miles a day to make daily rounds and 

attend emergency patients. 

In 1975, he and colleague 

Marge Rex were co-chairmen 

of a committee to improve 

the emergency medical 

service in Huntsville and 

Walker County. They and 

their committee, including 

county and city officials, visited 

Madisonville and studied 

surrounding communities. 

They made recommendations 

to the county and city on 

establishing a new service 

here in Huntsville and Walker 

County. At that time, with the 

help of a volunteer emergency 

corp., most of the ambulance 

service was being run out of 

a funeral home. Acting on 

the committee’s recommendations 

a new EMS service 

was established with highly 

trained personnel and 

intensive care level well 

equipped ambulances. The 

service evolved into a 

paramedic service under the 

direction of the Walker 

County Hospital District. 

Dr. Monday was appointed 

by the governor to the Texas 

Board of Medical Examiners 

from 1993-1999. In 2011, he 

was honored as Physician of the Year by 

the Huntsville Memorial Hospital employees. 

He served on the Board of the Chamber of 

Commerce, has been active in the Lions Club, 

and is a member of the First Methodist Church. 

Married to Jane Clements Monday, he 

and his wife are parents of three daughters, 

Kimberly, Julie, and Jennifer, all having 

post-graduate degrees graduating with honors. 

They have eight grandchildren. 


PETE JOHNSON 

TOWING & 

TRANSPORTATION 

SERVICE 

It is often said that men have a fascination 

with anything that has wheels. Pete Johnson is 

no exception. 

In 1966, Johnson was a part-time wrecker driver 

for Kirkland Wrecker Service and decided that 

was what he wanted to do. In 1967, he purchased 

a small Texaco service station and a three-quarter 

ton used Ford wrecker, rebuilt it, and started his 

own business—Johnson Wrecker Service. 

He talked to friends J. D. Johnston, Lloyd 

Hooks, A. R. Pursley, and others with wrecker 

experience; but, it was Mobil Oil distributor 

John Haney, who encouraged him to lease a larger 

service station. In 1975, he gave up that business 

and entered the wrecker business full-time. 

“I used a factory built Holmes 

440 wrecker,” he said, “adding a 

truck each year for the next four 

years.” His trucks were painted 

orange and white—a trend he continues 

as Pete Johnson Towing & 

Transportation Service. He expanded 

his fleet, adding a heavy duty 

wrecker, used 750 Holmes, and a 

new Ford rollback. He bought a 

new Chevrolet rollback in 1993, 

followed by a Landoll trailer. 

Johnson purchased the first wheel 

lift in Walker County; and, in 1985, 

bought three acres and facilities for 

office and storage. He built a new 

office in 2003 and painted it to 

match the trucks. He began hauling 

heavy equipment and, today, has 

three heavy haul tractors, three heavy 

haul trailers, a flatbed trailer, and box van. He 

advertises on sports calendars; works with law 

enforcement rotation, and is a Chamber member. 

The business, at 631 Ryans Ferry Road, was 

first named Huntsville’s Best Wrecker Service in 

1992, and several years since. His business was 

featured on the cover of American Towman, a 

national towing magazine. 

The company has twenty-five pieces of 

equipment and eight employees. He upholds 

the Golden Rule: “Treat customers as you want 

to be treated.” 

He plans working until he is ready to retire 

and, then, turn the business over to his son, 

Allan, and grandson, Robert Allan Johnson. 

❖ 

Above: Our newest truck, 

a Ford F-650 in front of our new 

office building. 

Below: A heavy duty rotator. 


SMITHER, MARTIN, 

HENDERSON & 

BLAZEK, P.C. 

In 1919, Eugene R. Berry opened a law office 

on the north side of Huntsville’s downtown 

square. Known today as Smither, Martin, 

Henderson & Blazek, P.C., five attorneys 

continue the general practice of law, including 

family, civil and criminal litigation, real estate, 

probate, juvenile, and oil and gas. 

Robert B. Smither (1906-1996) became 

Berry’s law partner in 1936, forming the firm 

of Berry and Smither. They continued that 

association until Berry’s death in 1968. In 1970, 

Lloyd C. Martin, a former member of the Texas 

House of Representatives, joined the firm. After 

serving in the Legislature, he was an Assistant 

Attorney General and TRA attorney who was 

instrumental in the creation of Lake Livingston. 

Former Walker County Attorney and Court at 

Law Judge Joe B. Henderson, Jr., was added to 

the firm as a partner in 1980. Former Criminal 

District Attorney Frank Blazek joined the firm 

in 1991. Huntsville native and Municipal Court 

Judge John R. Gaines and Nicholas C. Beaty, 

a 2001 graduate of Huntsville High School, 

are currently associates with the firm. Martin 

and Blazek are Board certified in the areas of 

real estate and criminal law respectively. 

Henderson has represented the Walker County 

Hospital District since 1981, as well as other 

public entities in Walker and surrounding 

counties. Both Martin and Henderson, as 

active owners and officers, continue the 

firm’s long relationship with Walker County 

Title Company. The firm’s staff includes three 

legal assistants and two office assistants. 

A number of young attorneys who have 

subsequently become successful in public 

service have been associated with and trained 

by the firm. Among them are Texas Board of 

Pardons & Paroles member Thomas Leeper, 

State District Judge Elizabeth Coker and former 

Madison County Criminal District Attorney 

William Bennett. 

The office is now located in the historic Gabe 

Smither home at 1414 Eleventh Street. The firm 

continues a long history of providing quality 

legal services in the general practice of law. 


WALKER 

COUNTY TITLE 

COMPANY 

Walker County Title Company was founded 

in 1898 by A. T. Randolph who recognized 

the growing need for a process of examining 

title to properties in the county. Randolph 

worked at establishing a process to better 

research records that could be used more easily 

than the public records. After several years of 

engaging in all aspects of real estate, including 

preparation of abstracts of title, he gradually 

began to accumulate the records, which are the 

basis of an abstract plant. 

A young lawyer named E. R. Berry came to 

Huntsville in 1918 as the football coach at 

Sam Houston State Teachers College and in 

1919 opened a law practice on the north side 

of the courthouse square. Berry bought Walker 

County Abstract in 1930. 

The Law Office and Walker County Abstract 

were destroyed by fire in 1936. After which, 

Berry and Robert B. Smither became partners 

continuing the title business. Smither served 

in the Marines in World War II. After his 

discharge he purchased and remodeled a 

building located at 1109 University Avenue for 

both the law practice and the title company. 

Smither sold a one-half interest in both companies 

to newcomer, Attorney Lloyd Martin in 

January of 1970. Their partnership continued 

until 1976 when James M. Haggard joined the 

operation. After Smither retired, Attorney Joe B. 

Henderson, Jr., purchased a one-fourth interest. 

In 1971, Hurlene Savage became an employee 

of the law firm; thereafter, assuming 

management duties in 1982. In 1984, Hurlene 

purchased one-fourth interest in the title 

company. Savage continues to manage the 

Walker County Title Company, employing 

ten professional individuals to provide title 

examinations and closing services for a 

substantial number of real estate transactions 

in both Walker and San Jacinto Counties. 

Walker County Title Company is proud to 

be the keeper of land records that are the heart 

and soul of the title business dating back to the 

original Spanish land grants. 


SAM HOUSTON 

CANCER CENTER 

In just a few short years, Sam Houston 

Cancer Center has built a reputation for 

providing state-of-the-art treatment close to 

home. According to Kirk E. Kanady, M. D., 

“That makes it more convenient for patients 

and loved ones alike.” 

It was Kanady who realized the need 

for advanced cancer treatment to serve patients 

in-and-around the greater Huntsville area. 

He founded the center in 2007. It was 

accredited by the American College of Radiology 

February 2, 2011 for Positron Emission 

Tomography (PET) and Computed Tomography 

(CT). Both assist in better detection, staging 

and monitoring the disease in the body. 

The facility’s mission is to administer the 

best definitive cancer treatment in a caring 

and compassionate manner. In accomplishing 

that, it uses a team approach to turn many 

cancer diagnoses into success stories. When a 

diagnosis is made, patients meet with several 

of the ten member staff, including a surgeon, 

oncologist, radiation oncologist, therapist and 

physicist to discuss various treatment options 

and determine which is best for a particular 

patient. Based on their findings, more than one 

type of treatment may be initiated. In some 

cases, patients may need surgery to remove 

the tumor along with follow-up radiation or 

chemotherapy to destroy any remaining cancer 

cells. Brachytherapy is another mode of 

treatment. It uses radioactive sources 

placed in or next to the tumor. 

Sam Houston Cancer Center believes 

strongly in community awareness and 

philanthropy. It is a supporter and 

participant in local cancer fundraising 

efforts. It sponsors the Huntsville Relay 

for Life and the Kats for the Cause 

5K run at Sam Houston State University. 

In addition, it is an active member of 

the Huntsville Chamber of Commerce, 

and a philanthropist and active participant 

in the community, donating money 

and support to various causes including 

Huntsville Intermediate School, SAFFE 

House, Fair on the Square and the 

annual Chamber Gala. 

Sam Houston Cancer Center is located 

at 112 Medical Park Lane in Huntsville 

and at www.samhoustoncancercenter.com. 


WALKER COUNTY 

ACE HARDWARE 

What was once the site of Cumberland 

Presbyterian Church—the first church in 

Huntsville—is now home to Walker County 

Ace Hardware. 

The store originated in 1927; however, it was 

not until 1940 that Floyd Harding and brotherin-law, 

Jim Scarborough, purchased the store. 

Floyd eventually retained ownership. His son, 

Jimmy, joined the store full time in 1972; his 

wife, Judi, joined the company in 1979. Jimmy 

and Judi’s son, Sean, joined them following 

graduation from Huntsville High School. 

Walker County Ace Hardware has all the 

conventional merchandise normally found in a 

hardware store; however, it offers the TLC of 

being family-owned. “We take pride in being 

able to assist our customers with personal service. 

That’s something you don’t find in the big 

box stores,” says Judi, now president. 

She attributes the store’s success to its 

knowledgeable and helpful staff. “That, combined 

with ‘going the extra mile’ when 

customers need it, proves our dedication to 

meeting customers’ expectations. Our employees 

are trained to approach customers the 

minute they walk in the store. 

“Often, we have phone calls after hours from 

customers with major issues such as water pipe 

or well problems. Understanding they need 

immediate attention, advice and supplies, we’re 

glad to open the store to help in emergencies.” 

In order to serve the growing community, 

the store was expanded in 2002, increasing 

space from 4,500 to 14,500 square feet. The 

additional space allows for new merchandise 

and expands the line of Ace products. It is 

also a recognized Stihl, Echo, and Craftsmen 

tool dealer with a certified mechanic on staff. 

The store also carries a large line of Nutrena 

feeds. As hunters, the Hardings sponsor the 

annual Big Buck Contest. 

Judi expanded the Gift and Home Décor 

department, Classic Country Corner with 

roosters, wind chimes, dip mixes, and Tervis 

Tumbler glassware; and takes pride in her 

Western and Texas section. 

Walker County Hardware is “Celebrating the 

Past & Anticipating the Future.” 

❖ 

Above: Floyd Harding (left) and two 

other employees of Walker County 

Hardware in the company’s 

original store. 

Below: Walker County 

Hardware today. 


SAM HOUSTON 

STATE UNIVERSITY 

In response to an increasing interest in 

improving the Texas public education system, a 

teacher training school known as the Sam 

Houston Normal Institute was approved by the 

Texas legislature in 1879. Since then, the university’s 

name, mission and goals have expanded to 

meet the evolving educational and employment 

needs of Texas and those of the world. 

In 1923, the school’s name was changed to 

Sam Houston State Teachers College. Two years 

later, Sam Houston became a member of the 

Southern Association of Colleges and Schools as 

an accredited institution of higher learning. 

The GI Bill contributed to an increase in 

students and faculty after WWII, furthering 

the school’s educational reach. Growth in 

enrollment and the expansion of academic 

undergraduate and graduate degree programs 

prompted the institution to change its name 

to Sam Houston State College in 1965 and Sam 

Houston State University (SHSU) in 1969. 

Strong leadership shaped the university’s 

progress over the decades changing the campus 

landscape through a tremendous building expansion 

and technological infrastructure upgrades. 

Admission standards increased, the number of 

faculty grew, and academic programs were added. 

The university achieved prestigious accreditations 

and received numerous recognitions including 

a Carnegie Doctoral Research Classification, 

placing SHSU in the top seven percent of all 

colleges and universities in the United States. 

Today, the University has six colleges: 

Business Administration, Criminal Justice, 

Education, Fine Arts & Mass 

Communication, Humanities 

and Social Sciences, and 

Science. SHSU offers an extensive 

range of bachelor’s and 

master’s degrees as well as five 

doctoral programs. 

Access to a SHSU education 

continues to expand through 

online programming and satellite 

campuses. The university is 

also recognized as a leader in 

articulation agreements with 

community colleges in Texas. 

With modern facilities, an 

inspired and capable administration, 

and a superior faculty, 

the university is embracing the 

challenges of a new century. 

With its namesake, its ties to 

Texas history and a record of 

many years of service to the 

people of the state, Sam 

Houston State University is truly 

“a great in Texas education.” 


UNIVERSITY 

CANCER CENTER 

HUNTSVILLE 

University Cancer Center Huntsville (UCCH) 

combines over twenty years of oncology experience 

and has earned an exemplary reputation 

for providing quality, state-of-the-art diagnostic, 

medical and oncology services for patients. 

It was Mark A. D’Andrea M. D., FACRO who, 

in 2003 saw the need for an oncology treatment 

center in Walker County that could also benefit 

surrounding areas. His goal was to establish 

such a center that would be all-inclusive in 

detecting and treating patients with various 

forms of cancer. Through determination and 

hard work, he galvanized the community and 

professional leaders to build UCCH. Sister 

facilities are located in Brenham, Houston and 

Pasadena, Texas. 

Using local contractors, a state-of-theart 

facility with “Old World” atmosphere 

was built that offers comfort and puts patients 

at ease. Future expansion will encompass 

emerging technology. 

Today, UCCH offers 

comprehensive, cutting 

edge technology for 

patients in Huntsville 

and outlying areas. This 

community-based center 

eliminates the need 

for patients to travel 

long distances for daily 

treatments because 

everything is under one 

roof and close to home. 

UCCH’s some fifty 

employees work as a 

team dedicated to providing 

cancer detection 

and treatment options. 

UCCH utilizes Positron Emission Tomography 

(PET) scans. PET is the definitive test for cancer 

detection and is also instrumental in the planning 

of radiation treatment. In fact, UCCH’s 

PET equipment was the first in Huntsville and 

Walker County. Radiation therapy encompasses 

Intensity Modulated Radiation Therapy (IMRT) 

and Image Guided Radiation Therapy (IGRT) to 

maximize treatment accuracy and minimize 

radiation exposure to healthy tissue. 

The entire professional team reiterates the 

organization’s mission statement: “We help our 

patients understand their diagnosis, prognosis, 

and options for customized treatment. We are 

committed to providing compassionate care to 

them and their loved ones in a comfortable, 

technically sophisticated environment. We take 

the time to learn about patients, and explain in 

as much detail as possible each step of their 

journey. That’s important to them—and, to us.” 


HUNTSVILLE 

INDEPENDENT 

SCHOOL 

DISTRICT 

❖ 

Above: Our mascot is the 

Huntsville Hornet. 

Below: The district’s current motto 

and mission is FOCUS which is our 

acronym for: For Our Children’s 

Unlimited Success! 

Huntsville Independent School District is a 

public school system that is deeply rooted to a 

strong education-minded community with very 

solid traditions of spirit and pride as every 

student in the district is a Huntsville Hornet. 

The district has educated children for more 

than 100 years. 

Accredited by the Texas Education Agency, 

Huntsville ISD offers a comprehensive and 

rigorous curriculum from pre-kindergarten 

through high school. With enrollment today of 

more than 6,000 students, the district offers a 

full-day pre-kindergarten center, four elementary 

schools for K-4, an intermediate campus 

for grades five and six, a middle school for 

grades seven and eight, and one high school 

for grades nine through twelve. Additionally, 

children with specific behavior issues can be 

served by the Excel Center for grades K-12. 

Students are afforded advanced academic 

opportunities with several options for 

earning college credit while in high school 

via online and dual credit courses. Vast 

opportunities are available to broaden the 

educational experience including several 

licenses and certifications through the 

Career & Technology Education Program 

such as cosmetology operator, pharmacy 

technician and certified 

nurse assistant, to name a few. 

An excellent Child Nutrition 

program and Transportation 

Services are also available for 

students along with bilingual, ESL, and special 

education services for students who qualify. 

A highly qualified staff is committed to 

providing a safe and caring environment for all 

children to learn and grow. 

Students have access to a wide variety of 

extracurricular activities, as Huntsville ISD is 

home to many award winning fine arts and 

athletic programs including band, choir, 

theatre, dance, art, and team sports, which 

allow students valuable experiences outside of 

the traditional classroom. 

The task of educating a digital generation of 

learners poses quite a challenge for today’s educators 

since the traditional teaching approach 

is not always as stimulating for students as 

they often become bored and disinterested. 

Huntsville ISD has a new vision joining many 

other Texas school districts working towards 

an initiative that moves from the “traditional 

approach” of teaching students “about the 

world” to a “learning based approach” where 

students learn through engagement within 

the world. Huntsville ISD embraces the use of 

technology and allows for the integration of 

digital devices into the learning process as 

student engagement is the key to learning. The 

district is focused on doing whatever it takes for 

each student to achieve success today while 

preparing them for a successful tomorrow. 

“FOCUS: For Our Children’s Unlimited 

Success!” Learn what is buzzing in Huntsville ISD 

at www.huntsville-isd.org. 


Stately columns frame the entrance to The 

Whistler Bed and Breakfast while towering 

oak, pecan, cedar and crape myrtle trees shade 

its expansive, green lawn. Rocking chairs and 

a swing beckon visitors to “rest a spell” on 

the wraparound front porch. Built by her 

ancestors in 1859, this beautiful, two story 

home has been in owner Mary Thomason 

Clegg’s family for five generations. It is she who 

has worked tirelessly, preserving the family’s 

heritage and the structure’s authenticity saying, 

“It is important to keep the historical elements 

of the structure intact.” 

Guests retreat to spacious bedrooms for the 

night and are served a sumptuous breakfast 

the next morning in the formal dining room. 

“It is a trip back in time,” says Mary, “yet it has 

all the amenities of modern day lodging.” 

THE WHISTLER 

BED AND 

BREAKFAST 

The house contains original furnishings, 

artifacts, and memories of her family’s heritage 

including a rosewood dining table. Originally 

a piano, it was owned by Mary Clegg’s great 

aunt, Mary Scott, a native of Mississippi. At age 

six, she pleaded with Union soldiers to spare 

her piano during their path of destruction 

through the South. 

In 1977 the home was recorded in the Texas 

Family Land Heritage Register. Originally, it 

was part of a larger family estate—one of the 

first to qualify for the honor. “It is a distinction 

conferred only upon those with continuous 

family land ownership for more than 100 years,” 

Mary adds. The Whistler Bed and Breakfast 

also known as the Eastham-Thomason house 

is a recorded Texas Historical Landmark and 

is a member of the Texas Bed and Breakfast 

Association, an organization of Texas’ finest 

inspected and approved bed and breakfasts. 

The Whistler celebrated its twenty-fifth 

anniversary as a bed and breakfast in 2011. 


www.thewhistlerbnb.com. 

The Whistler’s polished hardwood floors 

and antique furnishings, along with Mary’s 

welcoming hospitality, place this home at the 

very height of Victorian style and comfort. 


For more information about the following publications or about publishing your own book, please call 

Historical Publishing Network at 800-749-9790 or visit www.hpnbooks.com. 

Albemarle & Charlottesville: 

An Illustrated History of the First 150 Years 

Black Gold: The Story of Texas Oil & Gas 

Care By the Sea: A History of Medicine in Nueces County 

Coastal Visions: Images of Galveston County 

Ector County, Texas: 125 Years of History 

Garland: A Contemporary History 

Historic Abilene: An Illustrated History 

Historic Alamance County: An Illustrated History 

Historic Albuquerque: An Illustrated History 

Historic Amarillo: An Illustrated History 

Historic Anchorage: An Illustrated History 

Historic Austin: An Illustrated History 

Historic Baldwin County: A Bicentennial History 

Historic Baton Rouge: An Illustrated History 

Historic Beaufort County: An Illustrated History 

Historic Beaumont: An Illustrated History 

Historic Bexar County: An Illustrated History 

Historic Birmingham: An Illustrated History 

Historic Bonneville County: A Centennial History 

Historic Brazoria County: An Illustrated History 

Historic Brownsville: An Illustrated History 

Historic Charlotte: 

An Illustrated History of Charlotte and Mecklenburg County 

Historic Chautauqua County: An Illustrated History 

Historic Cheyenne: A History of the Magic City 

Historic Clayton County: An Illustrated History 

Historic Columbus: A Bicentennial History 

Historic Comal County: An Illustrated History 

Historic Corpus Christi: An Illustrated History 

Historic DeKalb County: An Illustrated History 

Historic Denton County: An Illustrated History 

Historic Edmond: An Illustrated History 

Historic El Paso: An Illustrated History 

Historic Erie County: An Illustrated History 

Historic Fayette County: An Illustrated History 

Historic Fairbanks: An Illustrated History 

Historic Gainesville & Hall County: An Illustrated History 

Historic Gregg County: An Illustrated History 

Historic Hampton Roads: Where America Began 

Historic Hancock County: An Illustrated History 

Historic Henry County: An Illustrated History 

Historic Hood County: An Illustrated History 

Historic Houston: An Illustrated History 

Historic Hunt County: An Illustrated History 

Historic Illinois: An Illustrated History 

Historic Kennesaw: 1887-2012, Celebrating 125 Years 

Historic Kern County: 

An Illustrated History of Bakersfield and Kern County 

Historic Lafayette: 

An Illustrated History of Lafayette & Lafayette Parish 

Historic Laredo: 

An Illustrated History of Laredo & Webb County 

Historic Las Cruces: The Story of Las Cruces & The Mesilla Valley 

Historic Lee County: The Story of Fort Myers & Lee County 

Historic Louisiana: An Illustrated History 

Historic Mansfield: A Bicentennial History 

Historic Midland: An Illustrated History 

Historic Mobile: 

An Illustrated History of the Mobile Bay Region 

Historic Montgomery County: 

An Illustrated History of Montgomery County, Texas 

Historic Ocala: The Story of Ocala & Marion County 

Historic Oklahoma: An Illustrated History 

Historic Oklahoma County: An Illustrated History 

Historic Omaha: 

An Illustrated History of Omaha and Douglas County 

Historic Orange County: An Illustrated History 

Historic Osceola County: An Illustrated History 

Historic Ouachita Parish: An Illustrated History 

Historic Palestine: An Illustrated History 

Historic Paris and Lamar County: An Illustrated History 

Historic Pasadena: An Illustrated History 

Historic Passaic County: An Illustrated History 

Historic Pennsylvania An Illustrated History 

Historic Philadelphia: An Illustrated History 

Historic Prescott: 

An Illustrated History of Prescott & Yavapai County 

Historic Prince George’s County: An Illustrated History 

Historic Richardson: An Illustrated History 

Historic Rio Grande Valley: An Illustrated History 

Historic Rogers County: An Illustrated History 

Historic Santa Barbara: An Illustrated History 

Historic Scottsdale: A Life from the Land 

Historic Shelby County: An Illustrated History 

Historic Shreveport-Bossier: 

An Illustrated History of Shreveport & Bossier City 

Historic South Carolina: An Illustrated History 

Historic Smith County: An Illustrated History 

Historic Temple: An Illustrated History 

Historic Texarkana: An Illustrated History 

Historic Texas: An Illustrated History 

Historic Victoria: An Illustrated History 

Historic Tulsa: An Illustrated History 

Historic Wake County: An Illustrated History 

Historic Warren County: An Illustrated History 

Historic Williamson County: An Illustrated History 

Historic Wilmington & The Lower Cape Fear: 

An Illustrated History 

Historic York County: An Illustrated History 

In the Heart of Louisiana: An Illustrated History of Rapides Parish 

Iron, Wood & Water: An Illustrated History of Lake Oswego 

Jefferson Parish: Rich Heritage, Promising Future 

Miami’s Historic Neighborhoods: A History of Community 

Midland: Window to the West 

Montgomery in the 20th Century: Tradition & Change, 1880-2010 

The New Frontier: 

A Contemporary History of Fort Worth & Tarrant County 

Old Orange County Courthouse: A Centennial History 

Plano: An Illustrated Chronicle 

Rich With Opportunity: 

Images of Beaumont and Jefferson County 

San Antonio, City Exceptional 

The San Gabriel Valley: A 21st Century Portrait 

Southwest Louisiana: A Treasure Revealed 

The Spirit of Collin County 

Valley Places, Valley Faces 

Water, Rails & Oil: Historic Mid & South Jefferson County 


$29.95 

LEADERSHIP 

SPONSOR 

Huntsville 

Memorial 

Hospital 

ISBN: 978-1-939300-00-3 

XXXXXXXXXXX 

Historical Publishing Network

Historic Walker County

You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles

Delete template?

Save as template?