Col. Clinton McKamey Winkler

Winkler's years in Corsicana after the war, as the Handbook of Texas tells them, were crowded. He helped organize the town's volunteer fire department and its bar association, helped start the Hood's Texas Brigade Association in 1872, and chaired the Democratic state executive committee while the party worked to end Reconstruction. Voters sent him back to the legislature in 1872. Before the war he and six other prominent Navarro County men had organized the county's secession movement. He died in Austin in 1882 and was buried in Corsicana beside his first wife.

What the plaque says

Col. Clinton McKamey Winkler (October 19, 1821--May 13, 1882) Eminent judge, for whom a Texas county was named. Born in North Carolina. Settled in 1840 in the Republic of Texas. Admitted to the Bar (1843), he served 1847-49 in 2nd Texas Legislature. Raising 150 men for Hood's Brigade, he served four years in Confederate army; was wounded at Gettysburg. He was elected to 13th Texas Legislature. At creation of Texas Court of Appeals, he was one of three original justices. Married twice, he had eight children. Recorded 1971

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Petroleum Industry Park — 0.8 mi
  The pipes and drilling tower mark where a city water well struck oil on June 9, 1894, the start of the first Texas field to produce oil and gas in important quantities.
• Blind Lemon Memorial Cemetery — 21 mi
  The Freestone County grave of the Texas blues singer Blind Lemon Jefferson, who recorded for Paramount in Chicago from 1926 and died there in December 1929.
• Ellis County Courthouse — 30 mi
  J. Riely Gordon's courthouse of 1897 in Pecos red sandstone and pink granite, with twenty-one carved stone faces and two cornerstones left by a quarrel over its building.

More markers nearby

• David Reed Mitchell — steps away
• Samuel R. Frost — steps away
• Colonel Roger Q. Mills — 0.2 mi
• Frank Neal Drane — 0.2 mi