Moffett Park

Juneteenth began in Texas as a day of unfinished business. The Handbook of Texas says General Gordon Granger's General Order Number 3 reached Galveston on June 19, 1865, and the news reached about 250,000 enslaved people only gradually. Cooke County had 369 enslaved residents in 1860, per its Handbook entry. Early celebrations were often pushed to a town's outskirts, so Black groups raised money to buy their own ground; Houston's deed for ten acres dates from 1872. Moffett Park fits part of that pattern: a family's land lent for Black celebrations, later bought by the city.

What the plaque says

Moffett Park The owner of 90 acres in this vicinity, Missour native Ned Moffett, Sr., (1842-1924) wed Mary Stone on April 19, 1866. The couple had nine children, and early census records listed the family as Mulatto. The Moffetts permitted use of this property along Elm Creek for celebrations by local African American citizens, and in 1943 the City of Gainesville bought the land from heirs to form Moffett Park. The first large social event in the new park was the 1944 Juneteenth celebration. Recreational facilities eventually included playground equipment and a pool. Following integration of nearby Leonard Park in the mid-1960s, the site declined in use, but it remains an important reminder of the city's past. (2005)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Great Hanging Memorial — 0.9 mi
  Two granite monuments in a Gainesville park, dedicated in 2014, for the Cooke County men the Confederate militia hanged in October 1862 on suspicion of Unionism.
• Stonewall Saloon Museum — 22 mi
  Saint Jo's first permanent building, a stone saloon of 1873 with rooms upstairs for trail drovers, in a town named, the story goes, as a joke on a founder who did not drink.
• 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

• Cooke County, C.S.A./2nd Frontier Regiment — steps away
• Cooke County — steps away
• American Paint Horse Association — steps away
• Gainesville Community Circus — 0.2 mi