Kentucky Town

The Handbook of Texas ties Kentucky Town's start to a wagon train from Kentucky in 1849. Dr. Josiah L. Heiston platted it in 1852 as Ann Eliza, for his daughter, and the post office of 1854 already used the name Kentucky Town, earlier than the marker's 1858. Charles DeMorse counted two schools, a church, a lodge and three doctors in 1855. The marker says Sacred Harp singing began here; the Handbook traces that music to B. F. White's 1844 songbook and does not mention the town.

What the plaque says

Kentucky Town When first settled in 1830s was known as Annaliza. Renamed by Kentucky emigrants in 1858. Unique layout gave town protection against Indian attacks. On freight and stage routes. "Sacred Harp," a robust frontier gospel style of singing and composition, began here. During Civil War was Quantrill gang rendezvous. (1965)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Sam Rayburn House State Historic Site — 13 mi
  The two-story farmhouse west of Bonham that the longtime Speaker of the House built in 1916 and kept as his home, left as he lived in it and open as a museum since 1975.
• Eisenhower Birthplace State Historic Site — 17 mi
  The small frame house beside the Katy tracks in Denison where Dwight Eisenhower was born in 1890, bought by townspeople in 1946 and given to Texas in 1958.
• Eisenhower State Park — 22 mi
  A bluff-top park on Lake Texoma opened in 1958 on land leased from the Corps of Engineers, in the Red River country of Fort Johnson, Colbert's Ferry and the Butterfield stages.
• Hagerman National Wildlife Refuge — 24 mi
  A 1946 refuge on the Big Mineral Arm of Lake Texoma, laid over land bought for Denison Dam and the site of the vanished railroad town of Hagerman, now a winter stop for geese.

More markers nearby

• Vittitoe Cemetery — 0.7 mi
• Whitewright — 2.2 mi
• First Methodist Church of Whitewright — 2.5 mi
• City of Tom Bean — 2.7 mi