Grimes County, C.S.A.

The cotton this 1964 plaque calls the "Gold of the South" was grown by enslaved people, and in 1860 they outnumbered the free residents of Grimes. The census counted 5,468 enslaved people, 53 percent of the county, against 4,852 whites; their number had tripled in ten years. The county's 505 slaveholders averaged more than ten people each, a level reached in only seventeen Texas counties. Cotton rose from 2,282 bales in 1850 to 18,303 in 1860. During the war, enslavers fleeing the lower South brought more people in, and tax rolls counted 7,005 by 1864.

What the plaque says

Grimes County, C.S.A. Civil War military concentration point for troops and ordnance. Rich farm land. By 1861 densely populated. Favored secession by 907 to 9 vote. Sent 5 cavalry, 4 infantry companies to Confederate Army. Arms and ordnance works at Anderson produced cannon, cannon balls, guns, pistols, swords, sabres, bayonets, and gunpowder. Military telegraph line from Houston to Marshall crossed the county. Five men charged with treason against the Confederacy were held in 1864 in Anderson Jail, under the wartime suspension of habeas corpus, in constant peril of mob violence. People were relieved when these men were deported to Mexico by the military. Cotton, "Gold of the South", and food were produced in abundance. Cotton hauled to Mexico by local men was traded for goods vital to the Confederacy. Yet shortages occurred. For lack of paper, The Rev. George W. Baines of Anderson (great-grandfather of President Lyndon B. Johnson) suspended "The Texas Baptist", first state organ for that church. In 1865 the Piedmont Springs Resort Hotel, 7 miles to the west, became headquarters and hospital for Walker's division on its return from Louisiana where it helped prevent a Federal invasion of Texas. (1964)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Fanthorp Inn State Historic Site — 0.4 mi
  A cedar-log dogtrot cabin of 1834 on the road through Anderson that grew into a seventeen-room inn and post office for travelers of the Republic, kept by one family until 1976.
• Navasota — 9.2 mi
  A railroad and cotton town where the La Bahia Road crossed the Navasota River, scarred by an 1865 explosion and yellow fever, and the home ground of the songster Mance Lipscomb.
• Star of the Republic Museum — 15 mi
  A star-shaped museum of the Republic of Texas years, 1836 to 1846, built at Washington-on-the-Brazos after a Brenham campaign and opened on March 1, 1970.
• Washington-on-the-Brazos State Historic Site — 15 mi
  The townsite on the Brazos where delegates met in a cold, unfinished hall in March 1836 to declare Texas independent, with Independence Hall rebuilt and Anson Jones's Barrington farm worked as in 1850.

More markers nearby

• Grimes County — steps away
• In Memory of Colonel Benjamin Fort Smith and All Other Pioneers — steps away
• Orphans Friend Lodge No. 17 Ancient Free & Accepted Masons — steps away
• Fanthorp Inn — 0.4 mi