Early Settlers of Eastland County

Before any of these families arrived, the land had passed through several hands on paper. In 1822 much of it fell within Robertson's colony, in 1831 within the grant to Stephen F. Austin and Samuel May Williams, and later partly within the Peters colony. Comanche and Kiowa people visited the area. McGough Springs was the county's first community, and Mansker Lake, later Alameda, followed about 1859. The settlers grew small plots of corn, beans and sweet potatoes. Raids drove numbers down, and by 1870 only seventy-seven people and five small farms remained.

What the plaque says

First known Eastland area inhabitant was Frank Sanchez (d. 1867), who grazed herds here in the 1850s. The United States in 1853 established Army posts at Fort Phantom Hill, in present Taylor County, and Fort Belknap, in present Young County, giving the frontier protection against hostile Indians. This opened a modest influx of settlers, including families named Bell, Birden, Birt, Blair, Ellison, Fitzwaters, Flannagan, Gilbert, Herring, Highsaw, McGough, Mansker, Melburn, Oliver, Owens, Richards, Shirley, Singleton, Upton, and Wyatt, from "old states" of Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, North and South Carolina, and Tennessee. The county was created, but not organized, in 1858. The U.S. Census for 1860 showed 99 residents. When Texas seceded from the Union in 1861, and Army garrisons withdrew, many pioneers left or took refuge at Blair's Fort, in southeastern part of the county. Post-Civil War settlers included such leaders as Dr. Edwin Daniel Townsend, who arrived from Kentucky in 1871. The county was organized in an election held Dec. 2, 1873, with Merriman designated county seat (in violation of legislation creating the county). In 1875 the government was moved to Eastland, founded that year by investor Charles U. Connellee (1851-1930). (1972)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Old Rip at the Eastland County Courthouse — steps away
  A horned lizard in a glass-topped casket in the 1928 Eastland courthouse, the creature said to have come out alive from the old building's cornerstone after thirty-one years.
• Conrad Hilton Center and Mobley Hotel — 9.5 mi
  The 40-room oil-boom hotel in Cisco that Conrad Hilton bought in 1919 when a bank deal fell through, now a museum of the Hilton start and of Cisco's 1927 Santa Claus bank robbery.

More markers nearby

• Camp Salmon, C.S.A. — steps away
• Eastland — steps away
• First United Methodist Church of Eastland — steps away
• Mangum Baptist Church — 6.0 mi