Montague County

Most first residents came from the upper South, chiefly Tennessee, but many were farmers from Illinois, Indiana and Ohio, and no plantation society took hold; in 1861 only thirty-four of the 849 residents were enslaved. Voters rejected secession 86 to 50, and the Handbook of Texas suggests they feared losing the federal troops who were their only protection from raids. Raids did follow, and in 1870 the county had just 890 residents. Once the raiders were gone, the governor declared in 1878 that Montague was no longer a frontier county, and by the early 1880s it had 11,000 people.

What the plaque says

Created December 24, 1857; organized August 2, 1858; named in honor of Daniel Montague 1798-1876; Pioneer Texas surveyor and Indian fighter; commander of a company in the Mexican War; Montague, County Seat

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Stonewall Saloon Museum — 21 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.
• Clay County 1890 Jail Museum — 26 mi
  Henrietta's 1890 stone jail a block from the domed courthouse, now the county museum, with its original cells, a gallows that was never used and the sheriff's family quarters.
• Fort Richardson State Park and Historic Site — 29 mi
  The northernmost post of the Texas frontier line, outside Jacksboro, where a stone hospital and six other buildings stand from 1867 and a later Guard unit became the Lost Battalion.

More markers nearby

• First National Bank of Bowie — 0.6 mi
• M. Johnson Poultry Ranch — 0.9 mi
• Montague Cemetery — 11 mi
• Farmers and Merchants National Bank — 17 mi