Greenville

The plaque mentions occasions of violence without naming one. On July 28, 1908, a mob of over 2,000 people took Ted Smith, a Black man of 18 accused of raping a white woman, from the jail and burned him alive in the square, a dealer's note says. Officials refused to prosecute, and the Handbook of Texas says the sheriff later doubted a rape had occurred. From the 1920s into the 1960s a banner on Lee Street read "The Blackest Land, the Whitest People". In 2023 the Equal Justice Initiative planned to collect soil from the courthouse lawn.

What the plaque says

Greenville In 1846, the Texas legislature created Hunt County and specified that Greenville would be the name of the county seat, honoring Texas War for Independence veteran Thomas J. Green. Voters ultimately selected this location, on land donated by Tennessee surveyor McQuinney Howell Wright, for the new community of Greenville. The townsite was platted in May 1846 and the first lots were sold at auction the following January, although Wright did not file the deed officially conveying his land until March 22, 1850. Albert G. Hamilton served as first mayor after the town incorporated in 1852. Unlike most north central Texas counties, Hunt County voted in favor of secession during the national crisis in the 1860s. Economic hardship, occasions of violence, and occupation by federal troops characterized the Civil War and Reconstruction period in Greenville. The arrival of the Missouri, Kansas and Texas railroad in October 1880 was a watershed in Greenville's history. The railroad provided cotton farmers with easier shipping access, and cotton production and processing became major economic activities. New businesses and service industries, including banks, hotels, street cars, and the state's first municipally owned electric utility, developed to serve the growing community. Greenville was home to Majors Army Air Field and three colleges in the 20th century. Its location at the crossroads of major state and national highways helped Greenville develop over the years to become an industrial and trade center in northeast Texas. (2001)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Audie Murphy / American Cotton Museum — 1.5 mi
  A Greenville museum of Hunt County's military heroes, including Audie Murphy, and of cotton, which keeps the engine of what it says was the world's largest inland cotton compress.
• Rockwall County Historical Foundation & Museum — 24 mi
  A small museum in Harry Myers Park that keeps the evidence on Rockwall's rock wall, sandstone dikes that geologists call natural and folk tales call built.
• Cooper Lake State Park — 30 mi
  Two units on Jim Chapman Lake, a Corps reservoir proposed in the late 1930s, stalled by a lawsuit until 1984 and dedicated in 1991, with a 10.5-mile equestrian trail and wildlife land around it.

More markers nearby

• Greenville's Electric Light Plant — steps away
• Greenville Building and Loan Association — steps away
• Hunt County's First Railroad — steps away
• The Seven Courthouses of Hunt County — steps away