Charles Vernon Terrell

Terrell was born in 1861 in a log cabin near the Denton-Wise county line and left Texas A&M when his father died. The Handbook of Texas says he clerked, drove ox and mule teams to Fort Worth, Dallas, Sherman and Denison, quarried and hauled rock, and taught country school for four months before reading law. As captain of the Decatur Rifles he led the militia unit called out to the Great Southwest Strike at Fort Worth. As county attorney he prosecuted cattle rustlers. He wrote a memoir, The Terrells, in 1948, and died in 1959.

What the plaque says

Charles Vernon Terrell A leading public man in Texas, 1896-1939. Born in Wise County to early (1854) settlers. After two years at Texas A & M, read law and began practice in 1886. Served 1888-92 as Decatur City attorney; 1892-96 as county attorney; 1896-1901 and 1909-13 from Denton-Montague-Wise counties, in Texas Senate. There he sponsored act creating North Texas State University. He was state treasurer of Texas from 1921 to 1924. Appointed in 1924 to the Texas Railroad Commission (chairman 2 terms), he served during landmark years when Texas was catapulted into role of a major world energy supplier. Through regulation of oil and gas shipping, the Railroad Commission became the agency for making production rules. When East Texas in the 1930s began to produce oil in volumes such as the world had never known, and the state invoked martial law to quell strife there, Commissioner Terrell and associates pioneered in conservation without the sacrifice of industrial leadership. After his retirement in 1939, his native county had an oil discovery at Park Springs, in 1942. The Chico field came in with larger yields in 1947. C. V and Etta (May) Terrell were parents of Tully Vernon, John Preston, and Margaret (Mrs. F. . Ward). (1972)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Wise County Courthouse — steps away
  J. Riely Gordon's granite Romanesque courthouse of 1895-96 in Decatur, built after fire destroyed the Second Empire courthouse and set off a fight over the county seat.
• Denton County Courthouse-on-the-Square — 26 mi
  An 1896 courthouse by W. C. Dodson in Denton limestone, pink granite and two sandstones, restored in 2004, now a free county museum on a lawn holding the grave of John B. Denton.

More markers nearby

• Wise County, C.S.A. — steps away
• Colonel Absalom Bishop — steps away
• First National Bank of Decatur — steps away
• First Baptist Church of Decatur — 1.7 mi