Ellis County

The plaque honors a statesman; the Handbook of Texas counts the people. Ellis County's enslaved population grew more than twelvefold in the 1850s, to 1,104 in 1860, as settlers from the South brought slavery with them. In the fall of 1860, rumors of slave insurrection in Waxahachie and nearby communities led to the lynching of a number of Black people and allegedly antislavery white men, whom the Handbook does not name. Amzi Bradshaw and T. C. Neel represented the county at the secession convention in January 1861, and county voters then backed secession overwhelmingly.

What the plaque says

Ellis County Created December 20, 1849 from Navarro County Organized August 5, 1850 Named in honor of Richard Ellis, 1781-1846 a Virginian by birth and education Jurist and statesman of Alabama 1813-1825 Moved to Texas in 1825 President of the Constitutional Convention, March, 1836 Member, Congress of the Republic of Texas Waxahachie the county seat

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Ellis County Courthouse — 7.2 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.
• Cedar Ridge Preserve — 13 mi
  A 633-acre Audubon Dallas preserve at the western edge of Dallas County, with about nine miles of trails through prairie, woodland and escarpment hills.
• Dallas Heritage Village at Old City Park — 20 mi
  Dallas's first city park, laid out around Browder's Spring in 1876, now a museum of historic buildings moved here from across North Texas, among them Millermore, a cotton planter's mansion.
• The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza — 20 mi
  A plow-company warehouse of 1903, identified by the Warren Commission as the building Oswald fired from, now a museum on its sixth and seventh floors above Dealey Plaza.

More markers nearby

• Parsons' Cavalry C.S.A. — steps away
• Red Oak Cemetery — 1.3 mi
• Bell's Chapel Cemetery — 2.4 mi
• First Baptist Church of Ovilla — 4.5 mi