Freestone County

In 1860 Freestone's 417 farms included a few large plantations: the Handbook of Texas says two landholders held more than 100 enslaved people each, and fifty-seven held twenty or more. At the 1861 Secession Convention the county's delegates, John Gregg and W. M. Peck, voted to secede, and county voters followed 585 to 3. Slavery's end and a missing railroad slowed the economy afterward. In the 1920s, with Prohibition in force, bootlegging around Young's Mill produced Freestone County Bourbon Deluxe, moved out by car, boat, truck and plane, and some local families grew wealthy from it.

What the plaque says

Freestone County Formed from Limestone County; created September 6, 1850; organized January 6, 1851. So named from the nature of its stone. County seat, Fairfield. Formerly known as Mound Prairie.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Blind Lemon Memorial Cemetery — 18 mi
  The Freestone County grave of the Texas blues singer Blind Lemon Jefferson, who recorded for Paramount in Chicago from 1926 and died there in December 1929.
• Confederate Reunion Grounds State Historic Site — 24 mi
  Where Limestone County Confederate veterans gathered each summer from 1888, later a water supplier in the Mexia oil boom, now a Texas Historical Commission site on the Navasota River.
• Old Fort Parker — 25 mi
  A rebuilt 1830s family stockade near the Navasota River, where a May 1836 attack killed men of the Parker settlement and took five captives, among them nine-year-old Cynthia Ann Parker.

More markers nearby

• Val Verde Battery, C.S.A. — steps away
• Site of Law Office, General John Gregg — steps away
• Rev. George Washington Baines — steps away
• Butler Church Bell — steps away