Cooke County, C.S.A./2nd Frontier Regiment

The man the plaque names as commander of the Border Regiment, James G. Bourland, was born in South Carolina in 1801 and traded in slaves and horses in Kentucky and Tennessee before moving to Texas in 1837. The Handbook of Texas says he founded a plantation on land now in Cooke County and, as provost marshal in the war, directed the investigation that ended in the Great Hanging at Gainesville. He was later accused of other atrocities, which Confederate officials ignored. After the war he was pardoned, acquitted by a civil court and lived in seclusion until 1879.

What the plaque says

Cooke County, C.S.A./2nd Frontier Regiment Military, defense center in Civil War. Cooke voted 231 to 137 anti-secession, yet nine military units served Confederacy from here. In constant danger of Federal or Indian attack. Col. Wm. C. Young of Cooke, with 1,000 men took Indian Territory forts from Federals April-May 1861. Commissioners set up regular patrols. Forted a home as refuge for dependents. Gave $4,000 for munitions and wool cards to make cloth. Cotton gin, grist mill, gunsmiths, blacksmiths made war goods. C.S.A. was furnished epsom salts from Indian creek. Corn, beef, pork, wheat, other produce fed the military, home front. County swapped 25 steers for salt for dependent families. People worked hard, sacrificed much, protected homes of fighting men of Confederacy. (Back of Cooke County, C.S.A.) Organized Oct. 1863 with Gainesville as headquarters, the Second Frontier Regiment, Texas Cavalry C.S.A. guarded counties along Red River, to keep down outlaws, Indians, deserters. Col. James Bourland (1803-1868) was appointed Commander and it became known as "Bourland's Border Regiment." Union invasion from north of Red River was constantly threatened. These mounted troops patrolled, maintained posts along river and in Indian Territory. Confederate Seminole troops served with the unit. Famous Confederate Indian Gen. Stand Watie and his Cherokee Brigade shared duty along perilous border. Bourland also worked with Frontier Regiment, state troops, that maintained line posts 100 mi. west, a day's horseback ride apart, from Red to Rio Grande rivers, and with a state militia line 30 mi. to the west. Erected by The State of Texas 1963.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Great Hanging Memorial — 0.9 mi
  Two granite monuments in a Gainesville park, dedicated in 2014, for the Cooke County men the Confederate militia hanged in October 1862 on suspicion of Unionism.
• Stonewall Saloon Museum — 22 mi
  Saint Jo's first permanent building, a stone saloon of 1873 with rooms upstairs for trail drovers, in a town named, the story goes, as a joke on a founder who did not drink.
• Hagerman National Wildlife Refuge — 24 mi
  A 1946 refuge on the Big Mineral Arm of Lake Texoma, laid over land bought for Denison Dam and the site of the vanished railroad town of Hagerman, now a winter stop for geese.

More markers nearby

• Moffett Park — steps away
• Cooke County — steps away
• American Paint Horse Association — steps away
• Gainesville Community Circus — 0.2 mi