Colonel Isham Chisum

The plaque lists Chisum's commands; the Handbook of Texas supplies what it leaves out. He moved to Kaufman County in 1854 and owned eight to fourteen enslaved people from then until 1860, then voted for secession at the 1861 convention. In 1864 General Magruder had him arrested, and a court martial suspended him for six months; the Handbook says the reasons are unclear. He resigned in April 1865. Adjusting to life after slavery brought him financial and physical trouble, and he considered moving to Central or South America before settling in Bandera in 1869, where he died.

What the plaque says

Colonel Isham Chisum (1818-1884) One of leading early citizens of Kaufman County. Represented the county in Texas Secession Convention, Jan.-March 1861. Later in 1861, he fought in Confederate cavalry of Col. Tom Green in New Mexico campaign. As Colonel of 2nd Partisan Rangers, Walker's Division, fought at Mansfield and Pleasant Hill (La.), in Red River Campaign to prevent a Federal invasion of Texas in 1864. A cousin of Jesse Chisholm, who pioneered famous Chisholm Cattle Trail, and of cattle baron John Simpson Chisum, Col. Chisum married Charlotte Martin. They have many descendants in Texas. (1971)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• No. 1 British Flying Training School Museum — 9.1 mi
  A free museum at Terrell's airport where about 2,200 RAF cadets learned to fly between 1941 and 1945, with logbooks, uniforms, letters and original training aircraft.
• Rockwall County Historical Foundation & Museum — 25 mi
  A small museum in Harry Myers Park that keeps the evidence on Rockwall's rock wall, sandstone dikes that geologists call natural and folk tales call built.
• Fair Park — 29 mi
  The State Fair of Texas grounds since 1886, where the 1936 Texas Centennial Exposition left one of the country's greatest concentrations of Art Deco exposition buildings.
• African American Museum, Dallas — 29 mi
  Founded in 1974 at Bishop College, a free Fair Park museum holding the Sepia photograph archive, African art and A. Maceo Smith's papers, and the story of the Hall of Negro Life.

More markers nearby

• Mrs. William P. King — steps away
• Kaufman County — steps away
• First United Methodist Church — steps away
• Birthplace of City of Kaufman; Site of King's Fort — 0.2 mi