Name: Edna, Texas
Address: Edna, TX

Edna, TX RoadyGoat

Edna, Texas, sits nestled in a landscape that has always favored agriculture and ranching. While the oil boom of the 80s certainly changed things for a while, adding a layer of complexity to our economy, the roots here run deep into the soil. You see, this part of the Coastal Plain has a particular advantage: rich alluvial soil deposited over centuries by the Lavaca River. That river, by the way, is said to hide buried treasure somewhere along its banks, a testament to the area's long history. That fertile land, combined with a long growing season and relatively mild winters, makes this area perfect for cattle grazing and growing crops like cotton and rice. Even today, driving through Jackson County, you'll see vast pastures dotted with cattle and expansive fields of rice shimmering in the sun. These aren't just picturesque scenes; they're the backbone of our community. It's a legacy that began with the early settlers and ranchers who first recognized the land's potential and continues to shape our way of life, even as the world changes around us. It’s a quiet pride, born from knowing the land and working it well, that defines Edna.

Ganado, TX RoadyGoat

The name Ganado has an interesting origin. It was not chosen by the city's early settlers but by a railroad official who, in 1882, looked out the window of a train car and saw a large herd of cattle. Inspired by the sight, he decided the area should be called Ganado, which means 'cattle' in Spanish. This name change marked a significant shift in the city's history, as it moved away from its previous name, Mustang Settlement, and embraced its cattle ranching heritage.

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Ganado, TX RoadyGoat

Ganado's founding is closely tied to its cattle ranching history. The city was originally known as Mustang Settlement, named after nearby Mustang Creek where most settlers lived. Cattle ranching was the primary economic engine, and herds were driven to Louisiana for sale and later to Kansas City. The coming of the railroad in 1882 brought an abrupt end to this way of life and led to the city being renamed Ganado, meaning 'cattle' in Spanish. This marked the beginning of a new era for the city, which grew almost overnight into a bustling city with new homes, hotels, and businesses.

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Gibson, Henry [Monk]

1905

Henry "Monk" Gibson, born around 1889, was the convicted murderer of members of the Conditt family of Edna, Texas, on September 28, 1905. Gibson, a Black teenager, was employed by J. F. Conditt to plow his field when Conditt's wife, Lora, their twelve-year-old daughter, Mildred, and sons Herschell, Jesse, and Joseph were found bludgeoned and stabbed to death at their home. The youngest Conditt child, ten-month-old Lloyd, survived. Lora and Mildred had been sexually assaulted. J. F. Conditt had been working in a rice field several miles away. Suspicions soon centered on Gibson, who was the person that initially reported the murders. Gibson was taken into custody that evening by Jackson county Sheriff Albert C. Egg. He subsequently escaped while being transferred to a jail in nearby Hallettsville, largely to protect him from possible lynching, and remained at large for nearly two weeks, sparking a massive manhunt that drew national attention. In the meantime his family was arrested and jailed, possibly due to suspicions that they had aided his escape and possibly also due to rumors that local mobs were planning to burn them to death. Governor S. W. T. Lanham called out the troops-elements of the Houston Light Guards and another contingent of cavalrymen from Austin-to protect Gibson and his family from lynching. A contingent of Texas Rangers under Captain William Jesse McDonald arrived to coordinate the search for Gibson and, later, to protect him from angry citizens. Gibson was eventually discovered on October 9, hiding in a nearby barn. He was promptly indicted by a local grand jury. His attorneys won a change of venue to Bexar County where a jury was unable to reach a verdict, at least in part because it was thought that the slightly built Gibson could not have acted alone to commit the killings. Indeed, after the mistrial a Black man named Felix Powell was tried, convicted, and hung in connection with the Conditt murders. The second trial of Monk Gibson was held in DeWitt County, adjoining the county in which the crime took place. Here a jury selected from a panel of 190 White men convicted Gibson of murder on evidence that included testimony that Gibson was seen near the murder scene at the time of the killings and that he was found to have spots of blood on his clothes and skin after the bodies of the Conditts were discovered. Gibson's appeal of the conviction raised the issues of racial prejudice in selection of the jury; Gibson's youth (he was either sixteen or seventeen at the time of the murders); the state's introduction into evidence of photographs taken several months after the crime took place; and Gibson's unsuccessful request for a second change of venue in the case. The appeal failed, and Gibson was hanged in Cuero on June 27, 1908, before a large crowd of onlookers. A subject of massive statewide interest, if not hysteria, at the time, the Monk Gibson case is perhaps most notable now for the fact that a trial was held at all- lynching was not uncommon in the era, especially when a Black man was alleged to have committed violence against a White woman-and for the way that the trial prefigured legal issues relating to race and age that still trouble Texas criminal courts.

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Green, Rufus, Sr.

1950

Rufus Green, Sr., African-American champion calf roper and horse trainer, was born near Edna, Texas, on March 30, 1923. He attended school only through the elementary grade level. When he was fifteen years old, he found employment as a ranch hand on the F.W. Gross Ranch in Victoria, Texas, where his cowboy days began as he developed an ability to ride horses. He learned to rope and care for horses under the direction of cowboys James Fry and Richard Miller. Green's ability to communicate with horses enabled him to eventually develop into one of the best roping, barrel racing, hazing, and cutting horse trainers of his time. On weekends he competed against other cowboys on the ranch as they rode bucking horses and roped calves. As his skills developed, he entered local rodeos in South Texas to supplement his income. Green was so successful in calf roping competitions that he made enough money to quit his ranch job and became a full-time rodeo professional during the 1950s. In the early 1960s Green was the first African American to enter the calf roping event in the Houston Fat Stock Show held at the Sam Houston Coliseum. He placed second in the tie-down contest. This event happened long before Blacks were allowed seats inside the arena. During his career, Green competed in more than 2,000 rodeos all across the United States and won many monetary prizes, trophies, saddles, and belt buckles. He was featured in Ebony magazine in 1957. He was named all-around champion at rodeos at Frank County Fair in Ottawa, Kansas, in 1960 and Manor Downs in Austin, Texas, in 1978. Green and his first wife, Doris M. Griffin, had two sons-Rufus Jr., a medical doctor, and Bobby L. Green, a registered nurse. He married again and with second wife, Castella Green, had six foster children. Green also had a daughter named Lawana Green-Stevenson. Green was a founding member of the Southwestern Rodeo Cowboy's Association, a historically Black organization. He was one of the first Black cowboys to receive a Professional Rodeo Cowboy's Association (PRCA) Card. Green trained more than 1,000 competition horses. He also trained more than 100 young men and women to ride, rope, barrel race, and bulldog in rodeos and horse riding competitions. Many of his students went on to be top contenders themselves, including William Hollis, Cleo Hearns, Shirley Gladden, Calvin Greeley, and Cedric Haynes. Later in life, Green not only remained active in the competitive rodeo circuit, he was also a staunch promoter of the events. He and Monroe Lawson produced the first rodeo on the campus of Prairie View A&M University to celebrate Black history. Green received his last trophy saddle for competing in the senior category at a rodeo in Conroe, Texas, in 1978. He continued to compete and attend rodeos and calf roping until his death on January 17, 1982, at his home in Prairie View, Texas. Close friend Monroe Lawson summed up Green's life and personality and stated that he was "exceptional in his roping skills, majestic in his performance, incomparable in his disposition, unique in his sense of humor, shrewd as a horse trader, a master teacher of calf roping and most admirable in his relationships with young people." Rufus Green, Sr., was inducted into the National Multicultural Western Heritage Museum's Hall of Fame in 2007.

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Brackenridge Cemetery

1800

Among family members buried there: John A. Brackenridge (1800-62), a Warrick County, Ind., neighbor from whom young Abraham Lincoln borrowed law brooks, 1855 founder of Texana Presbyterian Church; his son, George W. Brackenridge (1832-1902), emissary to Benito Juarez in Mexico from President Lincoln in 1860s, founder (1866) San Antonio National Bank, donor San Antonio's Brackenridge Park, member first board of regents, the University of Texas, serving 30 years, philanthropist; daughter Mary Eleanor Brackenridge (1837-1924), on first board of regents, CIA (Texas Woman's University).

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McCulloch, Samuel, Jr.

1835

Samuel McCulloch (McCullough, McCullock), Jr., free Black soldier in the Texas Revolution , was born in the Abbeville District of South Carolina on October 11, 1810. He moved with his White father, Samuel McCulloch, Sr., to Montgomery, Alabama, in 1815. In May 1835 Samuel McCulloch, Sr., describing himself as a single man, moved to Texas with his son and three daughters, Jane, Harriet, and Mahaly. The family settled on the Lavaca River in what is now Jackson County. Samuel McCulloch, Jr., and his sisters were considered free Blacks. On October 5, 1835, the younger McCulloch joined the Matagorda Volunteer Company as a private under the command of George M. Collinsworth . On October 9 he fought at Goliad and was severely wounded in the right shoulder during the storming of the Mexican officers' quarters. He was the only Texan wounded in the battle and became known as the first Texan casualty of the revolution. The musketball shattered his right shoulder, left him an invalid for nearly a year, and crippled him for life. Incapacitated by his wound, McCulloch remained at Goliad for three weeks after the battle and was then carried by John Polan to Victoria, where he stayed a short while. He was subsequently transported to his home in Jackson County, where he remained until April 1836, when he and other settlers in the area fled in an attempt to get ahead of the retreating Texan army. On July 8, 1836, after the battle of San Jacinto , a surgeon in the Texan army, possibly Dr. Nicholas D. Labadie , removed the musketball from McCulloch's shoulder. McCulloch's rights to residence and property in Texas were threatened by the passage of the Constitution of the Republic of Texas in September 1836. This charter contained a provision that barred "Africans [and] the descendants of Africans and Indians" from citizenship, and another that required all free Blacks to apply to the Congress for permanent residence in the Republic of Texas . McCulloch petitioned the Texas Congress in 1837 for citizenship for himself and his children and the right to receive grants of land. The petition outlined his service in the Texas army, stated that he had been the first Texan wounded in the revolution, and supported his request for land with the announcement that he had recently become the head of a family. The resolution of his petition was complicated by an act of the Congress, signed into law by President Sam Houston on June 5, 1837, that gave permanent residence rights to all free Blacks residing in Texas at the time of the Texas Declaration of Independence . The law granted McCulloch the right to residence and induced the committee on claims and accounts, before which his petition appeared, to put it aside as inexpedient. The committee's action effectively rejected McCulloch's request for citizenship and headright land. On August 11, 1837, McCulloch married Mary Lorena Vess, the White daughter of Jonathan Vess, who moved to Austin's colony sometime between 1821 and 1824. The McCullochs were never prosecuted for breaking the law against interracial marriage, which had passed two months before as a part of the Act of June 5, 1837. They remained married until Mary's death about November 8, 1847, and had four children. At least one of their sons, Lewis Clark McCulloch, served in the Confederate Army. On February 5, 1840, the Texas Congress passed an act that required all free Blacks to leave the republic within two years or be sold into slavery ( see ASHWORTH ACT ). McCulloch submitted a petition, introduced by Patrick Usher, asking that he, his three sisters, and a relative named Uldy be exempted from the law. On November 10, 1840, a relief bill for the McCullochs passed. Samuel McCulloch fought against Comanche Indians at the battle of Plum Creek on August 11 and 12, 1840. When Mexican general Adrián Woll invaded San Antonio in 1842, McCulloch served as a spy under the command of Col. Clark L. Owen . In 1841 he and his family had moved from Lavaca County

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Trooper Bill Davidson Memorial Highway

1992

Honors Texas DPS Trooper Bill Davidson, killed April 14, 1992, during a traffic stop on US-59 in Jackson County by Ronald Ray Howard. The case sparked a landmark civil suit by Davidson's widow against Tupac Shakur and Time Warner over the lyrics of 2Pacalypse Now.

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Confederates of Jackson County

1860

From 1860 population of 2612 came more than 100 Civil War soldiers, one an infantryman on a crutch: M. K. Simons, a Mexican war amputee, brigade quartermaster, 2nd Texas infantry, C. S. A. Officers included Capt. C. L. Owen, veteran of the Texas Revolution and Mexican war; killed at Shiloh in 1862. Composed chiefly of Jackson County men were Co. D, 1st Texas Cavalry; Co. K, 2nd Texas Infantry; and Co. M, 27th Texas Cavalry (Whitfield's Legion). Jackson men were also in other units, including Confederate marines and Terry's Texas Rangers, and saw much of war's greatest action.

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Edna, Texas

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Edna, TX RoadyGoat

Ganado, TX RoadyGoat

Ganado, TX RoadyGoat

Gibson, Henry [Monk]

Green, Rufus, Sr.

Brackenridge Cemetery

McCulloch, Samuel, Jr.

Trooper Bill Davidson Memorial Highway

Confederates of Jackson County

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