Parsons' Cavalry C.S.A.

Colonel William H. Parsons is the less familiar half of this marker. The Handbook of Texas says he left Alabama for the Mexican War, edited papers in Tyler and Waco, and in 1860 founded a Waco weekly, the South West, devoted to southern rights, which that year meant defending slavery. His regiment became the Twelfth Texas Cavalry, with Ellis County men in companies E, F and H. Recommended often for brigadier general, he was never promoted, after a dispute with Colonel Carter. After the war he explored a Confederate colony in British Honduras, then served in the Texas Senate.

What the plaque says

Parsons' Cavalry C.S.A. Originally comprised of men from Ellis and surrounding counties. Organized for Civil War service at Rockett's Spring (4 mi. E. of this site), Sept. 1861, unit was trained and commanded by Col. William H Parsons, Mexican War veteran, colorful duelist, editor, merchant, and lawyer. In a confederate brigade, this unit was joined with 12th, 19th, and 21st Texas Cavalry regiments, Morgan's Battalion and Pratt's Battery, to scout and fight in Missouri, Arkansas, Louisiana, and Indian Territory. It was famous for attacks on federal ironclad ships, Red River campaign, 1864. (1972)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Ellis County Courthouse — 7.2 mi
  J. Riely Gordon's courthouse of 1897 in Pecos red sandstone and pink granite, with twenty-one carved stone faces and two cornerstones left by a quarrel over its building.
• Cedar Ridge Preserve — 13 mi
  A 633-acre Audubon Dallas preserve at the western edge of Dallas County, with about nine miles of trails through prairie, woodland and escarpment hills.
• Dallas Heritage Village at Old City Park — 20 mi
  Dallas's first city park, laid out around Browder's Spring in 1876, now a museum of historic buildings moved here from across North Texas, among them Millermore, a cotton planter's mansion.
• The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza — 20 mi
  A plow-company warehouse of 1903, identified by the Warren Commission as the building Oswald fired from, now a museum on its sixth and seventh floors above Dealey Plaza.

More markers nearby

• Ellis County — steps away
• Red Oak Cemetery — 1.3 mi
• Bell's Chapel Cemetery — 2.4 mi
• First Baptist Church of Ovilla — 4.5 mi