Home of Last Texas Confederate Governor Pendleton Murrah

Murrah came to Texas for his lungs. The Handbook of Texas says he moved in 1850 for the dry climate, which helped his tuberculosis, and opened a law office in Marshall. He won the 1863 governor's race by more than 5,000 votes, partly because his opponent, Thomas Jefferson Chambers, was hostile to the Richmond government. In office he clashed with Gen. John B. Magruder over conscripting men from frontier counties and with Gen. Edmund Kirby Smith over cotton. He fled to Mexico in 1865 and died in Monterrey on August 4.

What the plaque says

Home of Last Texas Confederate Governor Pendleton Murrah (Star and Wreath) (1824-1865) Born South Carolina. Successful lawyer and businessman in Marshall. Elected to Texas Legislature 1857. At start of Civil War, served as colonel 14th Texas Cavalry. Governor 1863-1865, the most trying years of Confederacy. Debt, need, dependents of soldiers, and Confederate demands for more men and supplies all plagued his tenure. Conditions at time are shown by fact that cake served at his inaugural state dinner was made of corn meal. Early in his term, the South was split in two by loss of Mississippi River. Texas became the main source of supply, food and arms for western half. (1963)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Starr Family Home State Historic Site — 0.6 mi
  Maplecroft, the 1871 Greek Revival house Frank Starr built in Marshall, with Ruth Starr Blake's glass and china, an 1880s kitchen restored in 2019 and a retirement home built for a formerly enslaved person.
• Harrison County Historical Museum — 0.8 mi
  Galleries in Marshall's 1901 courthouse that run from the Caddo to the present, with Wiley College, Lady Bird Johnson's inaugural gown and a military gallery across the square in Memorial City Hall.
• Texas and Pacific Railway Depot and Museum — 1.3 mi
  The only surviving building of the Texas and Pacific shops at Marshall, a 1912 Mission Revival depot saved from demolition in the 1990s, still an Amtrak stop, with a railway museum and a Mikado locomotive.
• Caddo Lake National Wildlife Refuge — 15 mi
  Wetlands and woods on part of a former ammunition plant, now a refuge for wood ducks, prothonotary warblers and alligator snapping turtles, with four easy trails and a free visitor center on a Ramsar lake.

More markers nearby

• H. B. Pemberton — 0.4 mi
• Marshall Fire Department — 0.5 mi
• James Leonard Farmer, Sr. — 0.5 mi
• Wiley College — 0.5 mi