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    Henderson
    Henderson
    Henderson
    Ebook166 pages56 minutes

    Henderson

    By Cyndi Long Walker

    ()

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    About this ebook

    One of the oldest towns in Texas, Henderson founded in 1843 is situated in the rolling green hills and pine forests of East Texas. Named for the state s first governor, James P. Henderson, the town is the seat of Rusk County. Henderson s fertile land and abundant stores of clay were enjoyed for centuries by Caddo Indians and other indigenous people; after settlement by Anglos, beginning in the 1830s, the area became known for cotton plantations. More Old South than Old West, Henderson might have had spectacular growth if the planned Galveston, Houston & Henderson Railroad had come to fruition. When that did not happen, Henderson relied on an economy based on cotton, farming, and logging until the Great East Texas Oilfield was discovered in 1930 just a few miles west. Oil, and later the commercial production of bricks, paved the way for a brighter future for the town, which today is still partially sustained by the riches of the earth through lignite production. Generations of hardworking men and women have called Henderson home, and the town today enjoys a revitalized town square filled with shops and restaurants.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArcadia Publishing
    Release dateDec 8, 2014
    ISBN9781439648865
    Henderson
    Author

    Cyndi Long Walker

    Cyndi Long Walker has resided in Henderson almost all her life and has worked as the town�s Main Street coordinator as well as the communications officer of Henderson Independent School District. She is as a dedicated volunteer to historic preservation.

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      Book preview

      Henderson - Cyndi Long Walker

      doing!

      INTRODUCTION

      Things that may seem mundane, even boring, to eyes today can be of much importance to eyes in the future. That is why it is important to preserve buildings, papers, photographs, audio/visual material, and furniture—things that will tell people of the future what the world was like at a particular time.

      The world of Henderson, Texas, at its founding in 1843, was very different from the world of 2014, as this book is being compiled. The land on which Henderson sat had, seven years before, been liberated from Mexican rule in the April 21, 1836, Battle of San Jacinto, allowing settlers to pour into the new Republic of Texas in greater numbers. In 1843, a new county had been carved from Nacogdoches County and named for one of the heroes of the Texas revolution, Thomas Jefferson Rusk. A county seat had been surveyed and established. A legend about the naming of the town was related by old-timer Dabney White in a 1936 newspaper article: These white settlers began to lay out a town here and, while doing their necessary work, were interrupted by a tall, angular and red-haired horseman who asked them if they had yet selected a name for their proposed town. They asked him his name and he said ‘J.P. Henderson.’ ‘Well, we’ll name our town Henderson’ they said. James Pinkney Henderson later became Texas’ first governor and most scholarly statesman.

      White’s recollections continue, in the flowery language of long ago:

      This town hath legends and lays that tell of the memories of long vanished days. Those who settled here first were not adventurers, but were from the best elements of our Southern aristocracy of that day. These men and women gave a distinctive mark of culture, hospitality and honor that permeated the surrounding country and caused Rusk County to be recognized as one of the most influential counties in the making of Texas. Here, scholarly teachers established schools and colleges that became noted; here eloquent and learned preachers became leaders in morality, and here Texans selected many of their statesmen from these people. Here one of our first Congressmen from Texas is buried; here is buried the first president of Texas A&M College, and from this county in later years were sent three railroad commissioners, several U.S. Congressmen and one U.S. Senator. The original settlers of this county were home and community builders. Rusk County contained, at one time, more substantial and prosperous communities than did any other county in Texas of the time. Then, we had plantation homes, among them being the Dr. Miller plantation upon which the initial oil well was drilled in the now known greatest oil field in the world. . . . Henderson had grown gradually but substantially until an adventurous oil driller dreamed that oil was under these hills. His dream became a reality when he brought in the Joiner well on the old Miller plantation a few miles west of Henderson. At that moment, old Henderson ceased to be and new Henderson became a seething mass of money-mad adventurers.

      Dabney White was right that Henderson was settled by people of character, many of who went on to prominence in early Texas. He was right that Henderson was one of the most prosperous of the early towns in the state, and correct that Henderson was more Old South than Old West. At one time, there were 17 plantations of 10,000 acres or more in Rusk County, so what had become an established way of life came to a screeching halt at the end of the Civil War. According to some accounts, though, crops were good during Reconstruction, meaning that Rusk County did not suffer as much as some during this trying time. By the 1880s, new brick buildings were under construction in Henderson, most of which still stand today.

      Dabney White was correct that in the first half of the 20th century, it was the discovery of the Great East Texas Oil Field just west of Henderson that most changed the town. The discovery brought jobs, new residents, and untold riches to those lucky enough to own land containing the oil.

      After World War II, it was another earthly substance—clay—that brought prosperity. Henderson Clay Products was another source of good jobs, and the subsequent sale of the plant decades later made many local people millionaires. Until the present time, the mining of lignite by power companies has provided jobs for local citizens.

      Henderson looks to the future with hope for a continuation of its proud past. It does not aspire to be Dallas or Houston. It is satisfied being what it is, a small Texas town with a beautiful and charming downtown, friendly people, a climate open to business, excellent schools and healthcare, and beautiful surroundings lush with trees, hills, lakes, and streams. The residents of Henderson invite the reader to visit sometime.

      One

      PIONEER HENDERSON

      This map shows the location of Indian and Spanish settlements around 1820 in what was to become eastern Texas. Trammel’s Trace can be seen extending from Fulton, Arkansas, to Nacogdoches and intersecting El Camino Real (The King’s Highway), leading to San Antonio and beyond. The future town of Henderson, founded in 1843, would lie south of the Sabine River, about 40 miles north of Nacogdoches. Indians had inhabited the area for thousands of years, with Caddoes, and later Cherokee and Shawnee tribes, living around what would be Rusk County. A granite monument southwest of Henderson marks the place where

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