Hempstead, C.S.A.

One of Hempstead's founders opposed the war the town served. Dr. Richard Rodgers Peebles, a slaveholder who helped organize the town company in December 1856, turned Unionist, and on October 11, 1863 General Magruder charged him with treason with four others arrested for distributing a pamphlet calling for peace. A civilian judge ordered them freed, and General Kirby Smith ordered them rearrested. Peebles nearly died of typhus in the Anderson jail, lost the sight of his left eye, and in 1864 was deported to Mexico.

What the plaque says

Hempstead, C.S.A. Major Civil War center in Texas with railroad, troop training, manufacturing, and supply activity. Training camps Groce and Hebert kept troops in readiness to move by rail to Houston and thence to the coast of Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas to prevent invasion of state. Camp Groce became second largest prisoner of War camp in state receiving first Union prisoners in 1863. Textile mill, foundry, grist mill products supplied to Confederate Army. Field transportation bureau shop made and repaired wagons, saddles, harness. A memorial to Texans who served the Confederacy. Erected by the State of Texas 1963 [back] Breakup at War's End In the spring of 1865 Texas troops returning from Louisiana and coastal defenses gathered at Camp Groce. Rumor reached them of General Robert E. Lee's surrender at Appomattox. Some doubted, but soon the news was confirmed. Confederate generals Kirby Smith, John B. Magruder, and John H. Forney were there and bade their troops farewell. Comrades-in-arms of the recent conflict left to walk their weary way home in one of the last sad scenes of the southern Confederacy.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Star of the Republic Museum — 16 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 — 16 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.
• Navasota — 20 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.
• San Felipe de Austin State Historic Site — 20 mi
  Stephen F. Austin's colonial capital on a Brazos bluff, the town of the Consultation and the first Texas newspapers, burned by its own garrison in the Runaway Scrape of 1836.

More markers nearby

• Former Waller County Post Offices — steps away
• Waller County — steps away
• Hempstead High School — 0.5 mi
• Madison "Matt" "Kilpatrick" — 1.2 mi