East Texas Musical Convention

The convention's minutes run unbroken from 1868, and William Russell Adams, its president in 1874, 1884 and 1885, wrote that it skipped a few years during the Civil War. Settlers from Georgia and Alabama who arrived after the war strengthened it. It was modeled on the Southern Musical Convention, founded in 1845 by Benjamin Franklin White, compiler of The Sacred Harp. Singers perform a cappella from that tunebook. The convention has met in six counties: Gregg, Harrison, Panola, Rusk, Smith and Upshur. It now gathers in Henderson for two days on the weekend of the second Sunday in August.

What the plaque says

East Texas Musical Convention Sacred harp (fasola) singing is based on a system of shaped notes, dispersed harmony and minor chords. In its origins it was rural, folk, religious music that allowed singers to interpret, or personalize, the sounds. Brought westward by migrating settlers and kept alive through special songbooks, it found a welcome home in east Texas, where many settlers were from the south. Tradition holds that the East Texas Sacred Harp Singing Society, forerunner of the East Texas Musical Convention, dates to 1855. Suspended briefly during the Civil War years, the annual conventions, centered on six area counties, have maintained their popularity through the years. (2005)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• New London Museum and Cenotaph — 10 mi
  A volunteer-run museum beside the pink granite cenotaph for the March 1937 school gas explosion, holding a model of the school, a blackboard from that day and an odorizer device.
• East Texas Oil Museum — 16 mi
  A Kilgore College museum that rebuilds the 1930s oil boom in a full-scale Boomtown with a general store, drugstore and newspaper office, plus dioramas, films and antiques given by East Texans.
• Tex Ritter Museum and Texas Country Music Hall of Fame — 27 mi
  Carthage's country music museum, with Tex Ritter's boots, guitars and saddles in a room styled like a movie theater, and exhibits on other Texas stars, Jim Reeves among them.

More markers nearby

• Henderson Depot — steps away
• The Railroad in Rusk County — steps away
• Rusk County Agriculture — steps away
• Arnold Outhouse — steps away