Warren (Fannin County, Texas) sat along the Red River during the Republic of Texas (1836-1845) and early statehood years (1845-1860). Warren, Texas was once the seat of Fannin County. The town originally consisted of a private wooden fort and trading post along the Red River, erected by Abel Warren around 1836. Daniel Montague received the original land grant surrounding the trading post and opened up a store at the site after the Texas Revolution. At one point, Warren was co

Inside the old cemeteries where American dead reside, nature is taking back what was culled from her. A tree eats a decorative iron fence at the Pioneer Cemetery, aka the Methodist Episcopal Cemetery, in Clarksville, Red River County, Texas. This was the town’s first graveyard from 1834 to 1897 before a new one was deeded. Both blacks and whites are buried here. The main cemetery in Mansfield, De Soto Parish, Louisiana is still in use, but two centuries of random neglect take

A sketch of a map drawn for a textbook yields some interesting information. Here’s a mid-19th century, hand-drawn map of the Indian tribes in the United States, as per the creator’s assumption of what was known in 1650 (the original interpretive date of 1592 has been marked out and replaced by 1650). This is a manuscript map made by the US Army, meant for publication in a geography or history textbook. Its located in the Library of Congress. Around the Red River in today’s Te

Lucinda Davis, a person enslaved by the Creeks and a resident of former Indian Territory, was interviewed and photographed by the Federal Writers Project in the late 1930s. Polly Colbert was 83 when the Federal Writers Project interviewed her. Her story and dozens of others have been compiled in several volumes of “Born in Slavery” (1936-1939) that can be found in the Library of Congress. While the Federal Writer’s Project was initially created to provide paid employment to t

I found a couple of 1872 sketches of the “Red River” by Alfred Rudolph Waud. Waud was an English illustrator who worked in the last half of the 19th century for several US publications. His sketches became illustrations for magazines like Harpers Weekly. I discovered the sketch, “On the Red River” in the Historic New Orleans Collection at the Louisiana Digital Library (see above). I thought I had found a treasure trove of art that depicted life on the Red River, which I was h

The former elementary school in Humprheys, Jackson County, OK is a bit on the sunny side. Even though Jackson County (Oklahoma) is home to the air force base at Altus, it is full of ghost towns. Many of them lost population during the Great Depression, but it wasn’t until the latter half of the 20th century when the communities lost their schools (to me, the loss of a school is the hallmark of a ghost town). I visited Humphreys in southeastern Jackson County and took a pictur

According to the National Register, De Soto Parish, which lies between the Red and Sabine rivers in northwestern Louisiana, contains the highest concentration of Greek Revival architecture, outside of New Orleans, in the state. A perfect example is this beautiful 1850 mercantile in Keachie (aka Keatchie, aka Keachi), an antebellum town north of Mansfield. Keachie’s history is palpable in its buildings. The antebellum Baptist Church in Keachie is similar in style to the Method

Lovely former gas station in Detroit, Red River County, Texas. DEE-troyt was the home town of “Cactus Jack” John Nance Garner, a Speaker in the U.S. House of Representatives, contemporary of Sam Rayburn, and Vice President to Franklin Delano Roosevelt from 1933 to 1941. He ran for the presidency in 1940, but Roosevelt was re-nominated for a record 3rd term, and after Roosevelt won, Cactus Jack left politics soon thereafter. The Garner family home is still extant in Detroit, b

From 1841 to 1868, McKenzie Institute (also called McKenzie College) was the pride of Clarksville, Red River County, Texas. Until the end of the Civil War, high schools and colleges along the old southwestern frontier were invariably private (also called “by subscription”) and available only to the free middle class. Even with limited educational opportunities, a solid classical foundation remained very important, as the institute’s ad in the Dallas Herald (Aug 9, 1856) attes

The cobble stones, also called “cannonballs,” used in the structures (pictured below) constitute good examples of Indigenous architecture of the western Red River Valley.  The stones were quarried from the rivers surrounding the Wichita Mountains in Oklahoma. Oklahomans began using the native round, granite rocks at the turn of the 20th century to adorn school houses, homes, hotels, and even Fort Sill. Some of the stones made their way to buildings in northwestern Texas, too.

This photograph is possibly the last image of Comanche women in a traditional camp on the open prairie. Comanche women and child at Mow-Wi camp at Palo Duro Canyon, possibly 1874. University of Texas at Arlington, Special Collections. Comanche women and child at Mow-Wi camp at Palo Duro Canyon, possibly 1874. University of Texas at Arlington, Special Collections. It is noted by archivists that it was most likely taken in 1874 after the Battle of Palo Duro Canyon (Randall Coun

In 1958, Martin Luther King, Jr.  met with community and NAACP leaders to formulate a school integration plan at the (old) Galilee Baptist Church on Williamson Street in Shreveport. Shreveport resident William Hines, who was one of the city’s first African American police officers, gave an oral history to Shondra Houston and her student Senae Hall about his experiences with protecting Dr. King during this historic but also dangerous trip. The interview can be located in its e

Note that the map’s cardinal directions are a bit different. From left to right is north to south. To see a larger image of this map, click here. According to this map filed by the Houston & Texas Railroad with the Texas General Land Office, their rail line was proposed to extend to the Red River in 1872. Their terminus would be an apparently large town called Red River City, which, according to the map, was even bigger than Denison (the city that the MKT built). Alas, Red Ri

In the 1890s, these unnamed men from Montague County, Texas posed for a photograph after filing claims against the U.S. government for suffering Indian depredations. (University of Texas at Arlington Special Collections). Since the southern Plains Indians were supposed to be under government supervision inside the post-Civil War reservations, any Indian activity (war, ambush, horse taking, hunting) was viewed as criminal, even if an ambush or attack was instigated by the sett

Three major Native American tribes called the Red River Valley of the Southwest home long before Europeans staked their claims. The Comanches lived along the western most reaches – their primary economy consisted of hunting and the horse trade (some would say horse taking, or theft). The Comanches, who stemmed from the northern plains but worked their way down into the southern prairies, built an empire at the same time the Spanish, French, and English built theirs, and becam

My family hails from the South… I mean from way back. They came from the slums of Middlesex, London, and after a generation in Ireland, they boarded a boat to Virginia, whether voluntarily or not. The next generation then squatted in the Bladen swamps of North Carolina, and the next generation after that moved further southwest to the foothills in upcountry Alabama. From there, the next generation dove south to Natchez, Mississippi, then 30 years later north to Shreveport, th