Old Fredonia Townsite

A Texas Freedom Colonies Project entry and a local ferry history trace Fredonia's river life. Haden Edwards filed his survey in March 1838, received the patent in 1843 on land the Cherokee had claimed until they were driven out in 1839, and advertised lots in Nacogdoches. The ferry at Cotton's Crossing, later Fredonia Crossing, passed by an 1871 act to J. H. Jones and Henry Miller and then to William Moore, whose ferry ran until the county contracted for a bridge in 1884. Texas Escapes adds that freed people later founded a second Fredonia.

What the plaque says

Old Fredonia Townsite The community of Fredonia was founded by Haden Edwards, a land grantee who contracted in 1825 with the Mexican government to establish 800 families of settlers in East Texas. A later misunderstanding with Mexico caused him to organize the famous Fredonian Rebellion and flee to the U.S. in 1827 in failure. The town of Fredonia prospered, though, as an important ferry crossing and river port. The numerous structures built by residents included a brick kiln, homes and warehouses, mainly for cotton. After the Civil War, the population declined and the post office closed. Residents abandoned the town after it was bypassed by the railroad circa 1870. (1967, 2005)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• East Texas Oil Museum — 6.3 mi
  A Kilgore College museum that rebuilds the 1930s oil boom in a full-scale Boomtown with a general store, drugstore and newspaper office, plus dioramas, films and antiques given by East Texans.
• New London Museum and Cenotaph — 16 mi
  A volunteer-run museum beside the pink granite cenotaph for the March 1937 school gas explosion, holding a model of the school, a blackboard from that day and an odorizer device.
• Starr Family Home State Historic Site — 25 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 — 26 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.

More markers nearby

• Gum Spring Presbyterian Church (New Danville) — 3.3 mi
• Site of Harmon General Hospital — 4.0 mi
• Robert Gilmour LeTourneau — 4.0 mi
• Big Inch Pipeline — 4.3 mi