Brachfield

Charles Louis Brachfield was born in Vicksburg, Mississippi, in 1871, and his family moved to Henderson in 1877, where his father was a merchant. He attended Henderson College and was admitted to the bar at nineteen. Voters elected him county judge in 1897, and he served in the Texas Senate from January 1903 to September 1910. Governor Hobby appointed him a district judge in 1918, and he held the bench until 1928. In 1926 he missed a runoff for attorney general by about 3,600 votes. A rabbi and a Methodist minister together conducted his funeral in 1947.

What the plaque says

Brachfield This rural community has been known by many names. First called Gibsontown, it changed to Murval when a post office operated from 1853 to 1866. During the 1890s, The Rusk County News labeled the locale Needmore, and a hotel and school soon opened. Brachfield post office (1900-1906) was named for Charles Louis Brachfield (1871-1947), who made a stump speech here while campaigning for political office. Brachfield served 23 years as state senator and county and district judge; in 1926, he ran for attorney general as the first Jewish candidate for statewide office. The school merged with Patrick School in 1912. Sawmills, cotton, dairy, cattle, poultry, oil and gas have supported the local economy. (2007)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Tex Ritter Museum and Texas Country Music Hall of Fame — 19 mi
  Carthage's country music museum, with Tex Ritter's boots, guitars and saddles in a room styled like a movie theater, and exhibits on other Texas stars, Jim Reeves among them.
• New London Museum and Cenotaph — 22 mi
  A volunteer-run museum beside the pink granite cenotaph for the March 1937 school gas explosion, holding a model of the school, a blackboard from that day and an odorizer device.
• East Texas Oil Museum — 26 mi
  A Kilgore College museum that rebuilds the 1930s oil boom in a full-scale Boomtown with a general store, drugstore and newspaper office, plus dioramas, films and antiques given by East Texans.

More markers nearby

• Patrick Community — 1.1 mi
• Zion Hill Missionary Baptist Church & Cemetery — 2.1 mi
• Richard Brown — 3.9 mi
• Smyrna Baptist Church — 9.7 mi