Madisonville, Texas

In eighteen seventy two, Madison County elected a sheriff named Austin McGary, and according to the Handbook of Texas, he neither owned nor carried a gun. He said he had the best two barreled weapon there was: the Old…

The state prison farm east of Madisonville, near the Trinity River, has seen its share of breakouts. On a March afternoon in nineteen twenty, a guard got off his horse to help fix a broken plow, and a convict grabbed…

In March of nineteen twenty eight, Carl Harper was the sitting district judge for five counties, Madison among them, when his car bumped another car in Huntsville. The other driver, a truck driver and former Navy…

On Labor Day night, nineteen thirty eight, two highway patrolmen chased a speeder down Highway seventy five into Madisonville at about sixty miles an hour. He ran the light where Highways seventy five and twenty one…

(1918-1944) Madison County native Truman Kimbro was born in Cottonwood (6 mi. W), and attended school in nearby Center. Drafted into the army in December 1941, he arrived in Europe in October 1943 with the 2nd Engineer…

In 1853, Madisonville was founded as the county seat of newly organized Madison County in Texas. The town was named after U.S. President James Madison, the fourth chief executive, at the suggestion of Pleasant Williams…

George McJunkin was born into slavery around eighteen fifty one on a ranch near Midway, east of Madisonville. His father was a blacksmith who bought his own freedom. After emancipation George went west, taught himself…

Madisonville got its name from a doctor. Pleasant Kittrell came to the county in eighteen fifty, suggested the names Madison County and Madisonville, and picked the site for the county seat. He later moved to…

In April of nineteen seventy eight, a Rice University runner from Madisonville named Jeff Wells finished second in the Boston Marathon, two seconds behind Bill Rodgers, the closest finish in Boston history up to then.…

In August of eighteen ninety four, at Midway, a Mrs. J. W. Allen was given repeated doses of opiates for what they called bilious colic, and she sank into a swoon. The doctor and six men worked on her all night, and at…

On the twenty first of July, eighteen seventy, a disguised mob of about sixty men surrounded the Madisonville jail, forced the keys from the sheriff and freed a man awaiting trial for murder. That summer a state police…

Before dawn on the sixteenth of May, nineteen twenty eight, Ira Wakefield Junior, called Coon, was found shot in his bed at Midway, east of Madisonville. It was called a suicide at first. But the pistol was at his feet…

In the early hours of the twentieth of July, nineteen oh five, near Midway, somebody hit Tom Defee in the head with his own father's ax while he slept, sharing a bed with his brother John. The ax was left behind. John,…

If you want a meal with actual roots in this town, skip the highway chains and aim for the downtown square, where Walker's Cafe at 112 West Main Street has been serving Madisonville since 1917. Step through the old…

In nineteen thirty seven, a federal writers' project interviewed a ninety seven year old man named William Byrd, who had been born enslaved near Madisonville. He believed the man who owned him, Sam Byrd, was his father.…

Midway, east of Madisonville, got its name in eighteen fifty five from Joseph Addison Clark, who also taught its first school and was the first preacher of its Church of Christ. His sons Addison and Randolph were boys…

In eighteen eighty six, John Hodges Allen became principal of the Madison Academy here in Madisonville, and his brother Rivers came from Tennessee to help him. The school was renamed Allen Academy in eighteen ninety…

Around eighteen fifty, a young peddler from Kassel, Germany, named Julius Zulch built a log store at a watering hole on the trail between Midway and Boonville. In the late eighteen seventies he promoted Madison County…

The crossroads of George, west of Madisonville, grew from a post office opened in nineteen oh three at George Donaho's store. Glynn Donaho was born there in March of nineteen oh five. In the Second World War he…

On the twenty sixth of September, nineteen oh seven, the boiler at J. M. Kent's cotton gin in Madisonville blew up under about a hundred seventy five pounds of steam. The owner's son, Merit Kent, was thrown about fifty…

Madisonville calls itself the Mushroom Capital of Texas, so here's a mushroom story. The white button mushroom, the brown cremini and the big portobello are all the same species. Cremini is a brown strain picked young.…

Speaking of mushrooms, the largest known fungus on Earth is mostly underground in Oregon. In the Malheur National Forest, one single individual honey mushroom has spread through the soil and the roots of the trees…

Madisonville is named for President James Madison, and there's a famous story about his wife. On the twenty fourth of August, eighteen fourteen, British troops marched on Washington, and legend says Dolley Madison cut…

In December of eighteen eighty, Madison County's own county judge, T. A. McDonald, shot and killed a man named John Christian inside the courthouse, in a quarrel over a lawsuit about hiring out county convicts. McDonald…

The old Trinity bottom country east of Madisonville has its tales, collected by the county historical commission, and most of them can't be proven. One says an early settler named Young, living alone near Midway, came…

The name Bedias, the town and the creek south of Madisonville, comes from the Bidai people, who lived between the Brazos and the Trinity, farming corn and hunting deer. In the seventeen seventies they were reported…

East of Madisonville, at Midway, begins a rare kind of Texas highway: one with letters instead of a number. It's State Highway O S R, for Old San Antonio Road, and it runs about sixty two miles from Highway twenty one…

On election day, the second of November, nineteen eighty two, the radio evangelist Lester Roloff's small plane went down in a storm near Normangee, west of Madisonville. Roloff was killed, along with a women's singing…

Daniel Larrison was a fur trapper and a veteran of the War of Eighteen Twelve who settled around eighteen twenty eight where the La Bahía Road met the Camino Real, east of Madisonville. Larrison Creek carries his…

Patrick Hayes was an Irish born veteran of the Texas Revolution and an herb doctor, and his Seven Oaks plantation east of Madisonville covered seven thousand one hundred acres. The Antioch Church of Christ began on the…

When the Madison County courthouse burned in nineteen sixty seven, the cornerstone box turned up in the debris. Inside were old coins, a paper printed in what looked like Yiddish characters, and a copy of the…

At High Prairie Cemetery, west of Madisonville, the first grave is walled in stone. John Spencer Wolfe was shot on a dark night, the twenty third of June, eighteen seventy nine, as he left his fiancée's home. He was the…

In eighteen fifty four, according to a newspaper of the time, a Madisonville grocer named Nash stabbed a sixteen year old named James Wiseman to death for spilling bitters on his counter. The next night, while Nash was…

You're driving past the site of the First Baptist Church of Madisonville, a congregation with roots stretching back to 1856. That's when J. W. D. Creath, a missionary for the Southern Baptist Convention, deeded lots for…

Texas Highway 21 follows the route of El Camino Real de los Tejas across central and east Texas, designated a National Historic Trail in October 2004 by Public Law 108-342.

Russian-born Jewish immigrants Jake Shapira (d. 1903) and his wife Sarah owned a boarding house at this site which burned in 1903. The following year Sarah had this Victorian hotel built. The structure reflects Eastlake…

You're driving past the site of Madisonville's First United Methodist Church. Its story begins way back in 1842, before Madison County was even organized, with circuit-riding preachers serving the community. The…

Madisonville's nickname, 'The Mushroom Capital of Texas,' comes from a remarkable feat of agricultural engineering happening just outside of town. At the Monterey Mushrooms facility, perfect conditions for growing fungi…

Born in Madisonville on February 16, 1896, Jubal Richard “J.R.” Parten secured his legacy as a pioneer in the American oil industry and a reputation in local, state and national politics. Studying…

You're driving past the site of the Madisonville Church of Christ. This congregation got its start way back in November of 1858, organized by Brother Benton Sweeney and nineteen charter members. For years, traveling…

Jubal Richard (Major, J. R.) Parten, businessman, political activist, philanthropist, and university regent, son of Wayne Lafayette and Ella May (Brooks) Parten, was born at Madisonville, Texas, on February 16, 1896,…

You're driving through Madison County, a place with a complicated past. Back in 1774, Spanish Governor Juan María de Ripperdá established a settlement right here, near the Trinity River. It was called Nuestra Señora del…

You're driving near Madisonville, Texas, and right here is where Santísima Trinidad de Salcedo once stood. Founded in 1806 by the Spanish, this wasn't just a town; it was an experiment in living. Soldiers and civilians…

You're driving through Madison County, not far from where Harriet Glass Barrett lived most of her life. Born enslaved around 1851, Harriet's story is largely known through her own words, recorded in the late 1930s. When…

You're driving through Madison County, Texas, where William Wallace Viser lived a life that spanned merchant, postmaster, and educator. But when the Civil War broke out in <say-as interpret-as="date"…

You're driving through Madisonville, a town born in 1853. It was established as the county seat of the brand new Madison County, named for President James Madison. The land was donated by Job Starks Collard, and the…

You're driving past Wilson Chapel Methodist Church, a cornerstone of Madisonville's African American community. Organized in 1873 by Reverend W. A. Parks and just ten members, this was the second Black church…

You're driving past the site of Marian Anderson High School in Madisonville. It started in 1880 as a one-room schoolhouse, the first for African American students in town. By the 1920s, a new, larger school was built,…

You're driving past Shiloh Missionary Baptist Church, a cornerstone of the African American community here since 1885. Organized by Reverend N. C. McCloud, its first members were many former slaves. Services started in…

You're driving through Madison County, formed way back in 1853 from parts of Grimes, Walker, and Leon counties. It's named for James Madison, the 'Father of the Constitution' and fourth U.S. President. The county seat,…

You're driving through Madisonville, but imagine this place back in the 1930s. Right here, Camp Sam Houston was humming with activity. This wasn't just any camp; it was part of Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal, a soil…

Christopher Houston (Kit) Carson, frontiersman, son of Lindsey and Rebecca (Robinson) Carson, was born on December 24, 1809, in Madison County, Kentucky. The family moved in 1811 to Howard County, Missouri, where Kit…

You're driving through what is now Madison County, but back in the 1830s, this was the site of Nathaniel Robbins's homestead. Robbins's Ferry, right here on the Trinity River, became a vital crossing point on the Old…

Zulch was on the headwaters of Kickapoo Creek near the junction of Farm roads 39 and 1372, eleven miles southwest of Madisonville in southwestern Madison County. Settlement in the vicinity began in the late 1830s when…

North Zulch is at the intersection of State Highway 21 and U.S. Highway 190, six miles from the Navasota River and thirteen miles west of Madisonville in west central Madison County. It was established in 1907 when…

Albert Samuel Roberts was born on November 2, 1844, to William Henry and Virginia (Lafayette) Roberts in Madison County, Virginia. He moved to Texas with his family in 1858 and settled in Webberville. In 1861 he…

You're driving through what used to be Concord, Texas, a community that started life in the late 1800s as Gum Springs. It got its name from the local springs and gum trees. In 1898, a schoolhouse opened, and that's when…

John Crownover, an early settler, was born on October 7, 1774, to Benjamin and Rachel (Jasper) Crownover, who lived in Union District, South Carolina. Benjamin Crownover served in the Revolutionary War in South Carolina…

Elwood is on the Old San Antonio Road eight miles northeast of Madisonville in northeastern Madison County. Settlement in the vicinity seems to have begun in the early 1830s, when James Mitchell constructed a fort and a…

Jozye is on State Highway 90 at Farm Road 1452, three miles south of Madisonville in southern Madison County. The first settler in the vicinity was Joe Shannon, who built a house south of Caney Creek in 1887 and began…

Laceola is at the junction of Farm roads 978 and 2289, five miles west of Madisonville in central Madison County. Settlement in the vicinity began as early as the mid-1850s, but a community did not form until after the…

Mecca is on Farm Road 978 ten miles west of Madisonville in northwestern Madison County. It was founded about 1850 in what was then northern Grimes County and is one of the oldest settlements in Madison County. In 1894…

You're driving through the historic Bullard community area, settled by Calvin Cullee Bullard and his family back in 1867. They came from Hunt County and put down roots on 160 acres right here. Calvin ran a blacksmith…

You're driving past Park Cemetery, which began as a family burial ground. In 1852, John and Elizabeth Park buried her brother here, and later laid John to rest on the land. By 1870, the site was deeded for a community…

You're driving past the Greenbrier Cemetery, a place born from both community and tragedy. It started in 1884 as land for a school, but after the Colwell's daughter Callie died in 1888, part of the land became this…

In 1880 the children out here went to a schoolhouse called Black Oak, and it had two rooms for a reason that had nothing to do with grade levels. One room was for the boys. The other was for the girls. A single teacher…

Two men with the same last name put this place on the map, and neither of them had to found anything. Rufus M. Connor and James S. Connor ran the post office out here from 1890 until 1905, and Jim Connor kept the…

The ground under this community's church and school was a gift. A man named David Green donated the land for South Bethel School and for a Methodist church, and South Bethel Methodist became the congregation that held…

This was mixed farming country rather than a one crop place. The land around here raised livestock, cotton, and fruits and vegetables, and the settlement kept the machinery a farming community needs close at hand.…

You're driving past Rock Prairie Cemetery, a final resting place with roots stretching back to the earliest days of Texas settlement. Pioneers William and Delina Hollis arrived in Texas in 1837, eventually buying land…

Cross this creek heading north and you change counties in the very same instant, because Bedias Creek is the line between Walker and Madison. The name is a worn-down version of Bidai, the people whose villages once…

You're driving through Bedias, Texas, and right here is the story of Sarah Bradley Dodson. Born in Kentucky in 1812, she came to Texas as a child with Stephen F. Austin's first colonists. In 1835, as tensions with…

You're driving through Elwood, and just off the road is Allphin Cemetery. It started in 1854, not with a death, but with a discovery. Ransom Allphin, who'd farmed this land since 1835, was digging a well when he hit…

You're passing Bethel Cemetery near Bedias, the resting place of Sarah Bradley Dodson, the woman behind what many call the very first Lone Star flag. Born in Kentucky in 1812, she came to Texas as a child with Stephen…

You're driving past the Grimes County Bethel Cemetery, a resting place for Texas pioneers and a link to a community long gone. It all started in 1843 when a smallpox victim was buried here, creating the cemetery. But…

(January 8, 1812-October 9, 1848) Kentucky native Sarah Bradley came to Texas with Stephen F. Austin's Old 300 Colony in 1823. She married Archelaus B. Dodson in 1835, and made a blue, white, and red flag with a single…

You're driving through Madison County, right past where James and Calpernia Mitchell settled in Texas back in 1833. They came all the way from Virginia and picked up a Mexican land grant. James was a busy man, helping…

You're driving past the site of Cobbs Creek Missionary Baptist Church, founded way back in 1883. A small group gathered to organize the church, named for its location near Cobbs Creek. Reverend E.W. Mitchell became its…

You're driving through eastern San Patricio County, maybe near Taft or Gregory. Right here is the area once known as Midway. It was settled by midwesterners arriving on 'homeseeker trains' between 1908 and 1910. They…

You're driving through Dawson County, and right here is Midway. This community likely got its name because it sat exactly halfway between two local schools, Mount Olive and Mullins. Residents eventually merged their…

You're driving through what's now Lavaca County, near Shiner and Yoakum. This area was first granted land way back in 1838 to J. Branton Johnson for ranching. Later, German and Czech settlers arrived, carving up the…

You're driving through Madison County, on what's now State Highway 21. Right here, you're passing through the community of Midway. This spot was already a settlement by 1854, but it got its name in 1855 when Joseph…

You're driving through Midway, and just ahead is the Elwood Methodist Church. It began way back in the <say-as interpret-as="date" format="y">1840</say-as>s, when this community was called French. Services first took…

You're driving through what was once Daniel Larrison's land. Born in Pennsylvania, he served in the War of 1812 before heading to Texas. He received a Mexican land grant in 1833 for this area, becoming an early Anglo…

You're driving through Midway, Texas, and right here is the site of the Midway Church of Christ, organized around 1854. That's before the Civil War! The first minister, Joseph Addison Clark, arrived in 1855 and stayed…

The man buried in this cemetery did not just found a town. He mailed people the money to come live in it. Around 1850 a young peddler named Julius Zulch, freshly off the boat from Kassel in Germany, put up a log house…

Just north of North Zulch, Old Reservoir Lane runs off F M thirty nine and crosses the BNSF tracks. On a Monday evening in March of two thousand thirteen, a Houston bound freight train came through that crossing at…

Mossy Grove, Texas, sits nestled in the Piney Woods region, a landscape that gives the town its very name. Local lore says the original surveyors, pushing through thickets of longleaf pine and bottomland hardwood…

You're driving through Madison County, not far from where the town of Zulch used to be. It all started around 1850, when a German immigrant named Julius Zulch opened a store and a watering hole on a well-traveled trail.…

You're driving past Willowhole Cemetery, a place that's been serving this community since the 1860s. It was named for a spring-fed hollow near where settlers first arrived in the 1850s. The first recorded burial here…

North Zulch is here because the town of Zulch was two miles in the wrong direction. The older town sat down at Willow Hole, where Julius Zulch had run a store since about 1850, and by the turn of the century it was…

You're driving through Grimes County, not far from Bedias, where Thomas Plaster once ran a massive plantation. But before he was a wealthy planter, he was a soldier in the Texas Revolution. At the Battle of San Jacinto,…

You're driving through Grimes County, Texas, and right beneath your tires, scattered across this land, are pieces of ancient, melted glass. These are called tektites, formed by the fiery impact of a meteorite or comet…

You're driving through Bedias, a Texas community named for the Bidai Indians, whose name meant 'brushwood.' But this town is famous for something else found right here in Grimes County: Bediasites! These are unique…

You're driving through Grimes County, Texas, where a political newcomer named Ira Monroe Bennett found himself in a fight for his seat in the Texas House of Representatives. Bennett, a farmer and hotelkeeper who'd…

You're driving through Madison County, and right here is North Zulch. This town owes its existence to a railroad and a bit of a move. Back in 1907, the citizens of the older town of Zulch packed up and relocated north…

You're cruising through Bedias, a town with a name that echoes the Bidai Indians, meaning 'brushwood.' The first white settlers arrived in 1835, calling it Plasterville. But the real shake-up came in 1903 when a…

Midway is the oldest town in Madison County, settled in 1829, sitting right where the La Bahia Road crosses the Old San Antonio Road. It got its name in 1855, when Joseph Addison Clark came out from Midway, Kentucky and…

Situated at the junction of the La Bahía Road, now Texas State Highway 21, and the Old San Antonio Road, Texas State Highway OSR, Midway has been a crossroads for travelers and commerce. This strategic location has…

You're driving past the original site of Rogers Prairie, a Texas settlement that started way back in 1835. Robert Rogers, who received a land grant from Mexico, set up home here, and soon others joined him. A whole…

You're driving past the site of the Bedias First Baptist Church. Its story starts with a soldier! The Rev. Anderson Buffington, who fought in the Battle of San Jacinto in 1836, organized this church way back in 1848.…

You're driving near Leona, in Leon County. This is the Two Mile Paradise Cemetery, established around 1870. It was recognized as a Historic Texas Cemetery in 2008.

The Bidai outlasted the mission wars but not the epidemics that came with contact. In 1776 and 1777 a single outbreak, most likely smallpox, cut their population by about half. Often classified as an Atakapan-speaking…

Plow a field around Iola and Bedias and you might turn up a little piece of dark natural glass called a bediasite. These are tektites -- blobs of melted rock flung clear across the continent, roughly fifteen hundred…

Bedias takes its name from the Bidai, the Native people who lived along the creeks that still carry the name, in the Post Oak woods between the Brazos and Trinity rivers. It is a quiet name now, on a quiet Grimes County…

The next year, Spain came for revenge. In 1759 Colonel Diego Ortiz Parrilla marched north from San Antonio with a force of roughly five to six hundred men, Apache allies, and two cannons. On October 7, 1759, the…

The mission had been built the year before, in 1757, for the Lipan Apache, longtime enemies of the Comanche and the northern tribes the Spanish called the Norteños. Sheltering the Apache made San Sabá a target.…

The dirt around Bedias contains evidence of one of the most violent events in North America's geologic history. If you were to search the ground here, you might find a 'bediasite'—a small, rounded, black piece of…

The Lone Star flag had a maker, and she is buried a few miles from this spot. Sarah Bradley Dodson designed the first tricolor Lone Star flag of Texas and sewed it with the help of other women in Harrisburg. She made it…

As you drive into Bedias, you're entering a place named for people who lived here for centuries: the Bidai. Their name is thought to mean 'brushwood,' a perfect description of the dense, scrubby landscape of the East…

The Bedias you're in right now is actually 'New Bedias.' The original town, settled in 1835, was about three miles southwest of here, near what is now the Old Bedias Cemetery. For decades, it was a thriving little farm…

Long before this was a Texas town, it was the heartland of the Bidai people. The name 'Bedias' is our version of their name, which is thought to mean 'brushwood,' a nod to the tangled, dense forests of the Post Oak…

This city's story began to unfold in the mid-1800s. By the 1860s, a gristmill was already in operation, and the community saw the construction of its first church, which also served as a school. The 1870s brought a post…

Near 371 West Old San Antonio Road, about 400 feet southwest of FM 39, an eight-foot pink-granite marker rises beside the highway. Erected in 1936 for the Texas Centennial, it commemorates one of the oldest roads in…

You're driving along a road that's been a lifeline for Texas for over 300 years! This is El Camino Real, the King's Highway. It was first blazed in 1691 by Domingo Terán de los Ríos, the first provincial governor of…

First blazed in 1691 by Captain Don domingo Teran De Los Rios first provincial governor of Texas. In an expedition officially directed by Father Fray damian Massanet O-F-M Apostolic Missionary and explorer in Texas. the…

You're driving through Grimes County, and right near Normangee, you're passing through the hometown of William Womack Heath. Born in 1903, Heath had a career that spanned law, education, and public service, all before…

You're driving through Normangee, a town born from the railroad boom. Back in 1905, the Houston and Texas Central Railroad laid tracks right here, and soon after, the Trinity and Brazos Valley Railway joined in. These…

Before there was a Normangee, the commercial heart of this stretch of Leon County sat about two miles east at Rogers Prairie, a settlement strung along the Old San Antonio Road with a church, a school, a cotton gin, a…

Normangee boomed fast. It incorporated in 1913 with boundaries that straddled the Leon and Madison county line, and by 1914 the place reportedly held 1,100 residents, two banks, two cotton gins, hotels, a machine shop,…

In 1932, in a sharecropper's cabin somewhere in this small community, one of the world's most unique musical voices was born. His name was Albert Collins, and he would become a blues legend. Known as 'The Iceman' and…

About three miles north of Normangee, on November 2, 1982, a Cessna P210 flew into weather it could not survive. At the controls was Lester Roloff, the nationally known fundamentalist radio preacher, with four women…

Drive FM 39 through Normangee and you are traveling three transportation systems at once, layered on top of one another across three centuries. First came El Camino Real, a corridor of trails that wandered to follow…

Before he was a blues legend, Albert Collins was a ranch hand near Normangee. Born just down the road in nearby Leona, Collins would become one of the most influential Texas guitarists who ever lived, nicknamed "The…

For a town that counts its population in the hundreds, Normangee owns one of the more improbable sports stories in Texas high school basketball. In 2004, the Normangee Panthers won the Class A Division I state…

For five brief, shining years, Leona was the center of the universe in this part of Texas. When Leon County was organized in 1846, Leona was chosen as its first county seat. A log courthouse went up, and all official…

In the fall of 1927, at a picnic where Normangee boys played baseball against Leona boys, a teenager named Sam Hopkins watched his older cousin climb onto the bed of a truck and sing. The cousin was Alger 'Texas'…

Drive Main Street in Normangee and you could roll right past The Place at 434 Main Street without realizing it serves food at all, because from the road it still looks like an ordinary private home. That is exactly the…

You're driving past Harmony Cemetery, a final resting place that started with a single burial. Vincent Herlock, listed in the 1850 census with his wife and four sons, died in January of 1851. He was the first person…

You're driving past Bozeman Cemetery, established way back in 1852. It's been recognized as a Historic Texas Cemetery.

State Highway Twenty One follows much of the Old San Antonio Road, also called the Camino Real and the King's Highway. And the old route carries an extra name. A state highway minute order dated June twenty first,…

You're driving past Hayes Cemetery, a quiet resting place with a big Texas story. Patrick Hayes, an Irish native, arrived in Texas around 1836 and fought in the War for Independence. After his service, he settled in…

On August 23, 1994, this quiet farming town became the target of an armed crew of a dozen conspirators who had driven up from the Houston area to rob the Normangee State Bank. They gathered first at Hopewell Cemetery…

You're driving through the Evans Chapel community, named for settlers who arrived in 1845. In the mid-1880s, residents decided they needed a church and school. The original Evans Chapel United Methodist Church was built…

You're driving past the Leona area, where William B. Middleton lived out his days. Middleton wasn't just any pioneer; he was the very first sheriff of Leon County! Before that, he was a participant in the Mier…

You're driving through Midway, Texas, and right here is the site of Antioch Church of Christ. Established on a plantation, this congregation is believed to be among the oldest independent African American churches in…

Sam Lightnin' Hopkins was born in Centerville, just up the road, around nineteen eleven or twelve. His father, Abe, died in nineteen fifteen, and two of Lightnin's biographers say Abe was murdered, and that Sam's oldest…

Before there was a Leona, much of the land just east of here belonged to a free Black man named Allen Dimery. In February of eighteen thirty five, when Texas was still part of Mexico and slavery was outlawed, the…

In nineteen oh one, Judge W. D. Wood wrote down a legend about the old Spanish road that ran near here. Two or three times a year, he wrote, caravans of pack mules loaded with silver came along the road between San…

West of Leona, near Flynn, a state marker tells how the Boggy community began in eighteen sixty five. Robert Bowers, called Bob, had been enslaved, and his wife, Celia North Bowers, was of the Keechi people, who had…

In November of eighteen fifty nine, a neighbor named Christopher Goodman wrote to his brother in New York: there has been some more killings going on here. A man by the name of Lewis Durst, a wealthy man, was shot dead…

On a Sunday afternoon, the fifteenth of November, nineteen eighty seven, a tornado two hundred yards wide touched down in western Madison County and tracked north past Mecca to the Leon County line northeast of…

Henry Jewett was a Cambridge educated lawyer who had been private secretary to President Mirabeau Lamar, and he practiced at the very first court held here at Leona, in October of eighteen forty six. He became the…

On the third of January, eighteen fifty four, Frederick Law Olmsted, the man who later designed Central Park, came through Centerville with his brother, lost on a cow track road. They spent the night at the Centreville…

Leona is Spanish for lioness, and the lion in the sky, Leo, gives its name to the Leonid meteor shower. Every November the Earth passes through dust left by a comet that circles the sun every thirty three years, and the…

Leona is Spanish for lioness, and there's a lion myth worth fixing. The usual story is that lionesses do all the hunting while the males lie around. The National Zoo does say females are the main hunters and the males…

Leona is Spanish for lioness, and North America once had lions of its own. During the last Ice Age, the American lion ranged from southern Alaska to southern Mexico and from California to Maryland. It was about a…

Leon County is named either for Martín De León or, as another story goes, for a yellow wolf that settlers called a león. It is not named for Ponce de León. But since we're on the name: in fifteen thirteen, Juan Ponce de…

In January of eighteen forty six, a frontier Baptist preacher named Z. N. Morrell preached at Leona, and on the first Sunday of February he organized a church here with eight or nine members. He rode sixty miles every…

In eighteen oh nine, a trader reported that the main village of the Kichai people, with sixty warriors, stood near where Leona is now. An old county history says the Kichai called the surveyor's compass the land…

Thomas Greer helped work one of the Twin Sisters cannons at San Jacinto, and later settled in this country near Fort Boggy. How he died depends on who you read. The Handbook of Texas says he was killed in June of…

After the Civil War, two companies of Black federal soldiers were stationed outside Centerville to back up the Freedmen's Bureau, and according to the Handbook of Texas they were attacked several times. One soldier who…

In the late nineteen sixties, the filmmaker Les Blank followed Lightnin' Hopkins home for a short documentary called The Blues Accordin' to Lightnin' Hopkins, shot in Houston and in Centerville, with Lightnin' joking…

In June of two thousand, a woman living in an old Victorian house between Farm to Market eleven nineteen and Boggy Creek, east of Leona, reported ghostly howls at night. When she went out to chase off coyotes, something…

You're driving past the site of Trinidad, a place that saw major upheaval in the early 1800s. As early as 1805, this was a settlement and a Spanish fort. But things turned violent. In 1812, it was captured by the…

You're driving through East Texas, maybe near Leona, the birthplace of a blues legend: Albert Collins. Born in 1932, Collins became known as the 'Iceman' and the 'Master of the Telecaster.' He didn't just play the…

You're driving through Leon County, the home of Bruno Durst. Born in 1832, Durst was a farmer, a Texas Ranger, and a Confederate officer who saw action in major Civil War battles like Vicksburg and Mansfield. After the…

People had been farming this corner of Grimes County since the 1830s, but no town formed here and there was no particular reason for one. Then around 1900 word got out that the Trinity and Brazos Valley Railway meant to…

You're driving through Leon County, right where John Durst settled in 1844. He arrived in Texas way back in 1821, and by 1835, he owned the famous Old Stone Fort in Nacogdoches. But here in Leon County, his wife,…

The name is about as plain as a Texas town name gets, and it comes from exactly what you would guess. Two country roads, the Case road and the Democrat road, met out here, and that crossing appears to be what gave the…

This was a ranching supply point before it was anything else. T. H. Ware ran a general merchandise store and became the first postmaster when the office opened around 1900, and the town filled in from there with a…

Ten people lived here in 1900. Fifty by 1936, and the place was down to two businesses by then. The post office closed in the early 1920s and Cross started getting its mail hauled out from Iola instead. The school held…

You're driving past the site of the very first courthouse built in Leon County. Back in 1846, a simple log building went up right here. It served as the heart of the young county, with officials like Chief Justice Geo.…

You're cruising through Walker County, passing the final resting place of John McAdams. He arrived here around 1840, a veteran of the Texas Revolution, and quickly became a rancher, planter, and land speculator. The…

You're cruising through Walker County, and just off the road is the McAdams Homeplace. John McAdams, a veteran of the Texas Revolution, built this house in the 1840s with his first wife. He was quite the entrepreneur –…

You're driving through Midway, Texas, but just a few hundred years ago, this was the site of a Spanish settlement called Bucareli. In 1774, colonists who had been moved from Louisiana to San Antonio missed their East…

You're crossing the Trinity River right now, near where Paso Tomas, or Thomas' Ford, once stood. We cross water like this without a thought today, but in 1821 the Trinity could stop you cold. Few travelers could swim,…

Chris 'Birdman' Andersen grew up with his family on a remote ten-acre tract outside Iola. At Iola High School, basketball coach Rob Stewart persuaded the lanky teenager to focus on the game. After one season at Blinn…

Emmitt Leon Mitchell became Iola High School's first Black football player. He died in 1965 after a sports-related injury. His entire team attended his funeral at St. Louis Baptist Church wearing their jerseys. The St.…

In June 1954, twelve-year-old Birdie Marie Lofton, known as Doll, died after an illness. Her death dropped enrollment at Iola's two-room Black school below the number the district required to keep it open. The district…

Neveille Higgs left Baylor after a year and came to Iola to teach. About 1925 she married the town's football coach, Nall Colson, and later followed him into Texas politics. She won his former House district in 1938,…

Iola's volleyball program has won five UIL state championships: 2015, 2016, 2020, 2023, and 2025. The 2023 Lady Bulldogs finished 51-1, with their only loss coming against Class 6A Willis, a school many times Iola's…

The history preserved for Iola's St. Louis Cemetery remembers George Rogers as caretaker of the Willard Yeager ranch and a skilled Black cowboy. It says Rogers could move a herd from one pasture to another with only his…

On October 29, 1981, a Texas highway worker clearing debris along FM 244 south of Iola found skeletal remains near Bull Creek Bridge. Investigators determined they belonged to a teenage girl, but could not identify her.…

On a Saturday night in 1912, burglars dynamited the vault of the Iola State Bank and made off with somewhere between one thousand and fifteen hundred dollars. The strange part: Houston officers had warned the town weeks…

The railroads that reached Iola in 1906 and 1907 did more than move the town toward a new depot. They brought a print shop and a newspaper, the Iola Enterprise. Its editor and publisher was the Reverend A. J. Frick, who…

In April 1961, the quiet woods outside Iola became the center of a four-county manhunt. Thirty-five-year-old Willie Donald Smith was serving ten years for burglary when he walked away from a prison construction job near…

Iola had a church and school by 1852, a mill in the 1860s, a post office in the 1870s, and a railroad-built business district by 1907. Yet it remained an unincorporated community for another century. Residents finally…

You're driving through Iola, a community named for one of Stephen F. Austin's earliest colonists. Edward Ariola settled here back in 1836. For decades, Iola grew slowly, with a gristmill and a church that also served as…

Iola's 1998 team is the standard every Bulldog team since has chased. They reached the state semifinal at 13-0, having beaten Granger 22-14, Apple Springs 52-34, Charlotte 40-8 in the regional round and Bartlett 26-13…

Iola has played Tenaha four times and lost four times, and every one of them ended Iola's season. The 1998 state semifinal went 34-0 to Tenaha, who then won the state title. The 2014 state quarterfinal was the close…

Iola opened the 2017 season 1-4 in non-district play. Then the Bulldogs swept District 5-0 — Colmesneil 63-0, Sabine Pass 48-0, Burkeville 57-0, Evadale 20-14, Hull-Daisetta 38-0 — and won an undefeated district…

On October 24, 2025, Iola hosted Burton, who came in 8-0 and tied for first in district while the Bulldogs sat third at 5-3. Brek Roberts kicked a field goal as time expired and Iola won 37-36 — a walk-off upset of an…

The farm road that runs into Iola, FM 39, isn't just a road. For about seventy-one miles it sits right on top of an abandoned railroad grade -- the old Mexia-to-Nelleva cutoff, a ninety-four-mile shortcut pushed through…

Iola wasn't always where it is now. When two railroads reached the area in 1906 and 1907, the little settlement of about a hundred and fifty people simply picked up and moved to the new depot. Houses, the newspaper, the…

Iola put 2 players on the statewide leaderboards of the 2026 Texas high school baseball playoffs. Brody Vaughn had 47 strikeouts (3rd in the state). Ryan Roubion had 9 stolen bases (11th in the state).

You're driving through Leon County, Texas, a place that got its start way back in <say-as interpret-as="date" format="y">1846</say-as>. It was carved out of Robertson County and officially organized just a few months…

You're driving through Iola, and right here is the story of Katy Holland McDowell Treadwell Cobb. Born in 1815, she was just seven years old when she journeyed to Texas with her parents, becoming part of Stephen F.…