Rockwall Farm

When the Civil War began in 1861, William T. Bradfield's son John took over the stage company while William served as quartermaster of the Seventh Texas Regiment, according to the Stephen F. Austin State University Heritage Center. After the war his Marshall to Dallas route ran west of Hallsville through Earpville, Starrville, Tyler, Garden Valley, Canton, Prairieville and Kaufman. The Texas and Pacific acquired the Southern Pacific in 1872, and Bradfield later served as a director. He and his wife returned to North Carolina in 1875, and he died there on May 26, 1899.

What the plaque says

Rockwall Farm Large colonial home built 50 yards north, 1854. Overnight stop on Wm. T. Brooks' stagecoach line from Monroe, La., to Tyler. From here, mail went to Earpville, a site now in Longview. Slaves hewed lumber, made the chimney brocks from trees and clay on the place. The first floor partitions folded away to make big ballroom. The black walnut coffin built for house owner John Harris was favored table for poker upstairs. Last owners, J. Roy Sparkman and Jack Castleberry families, restored, opened to visitors. House burned in 1952. (1964)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• East Texas Oil Museum — 10 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 — 21 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 — 24 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 — 24 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

• Oliver H. Pegues — 1.6 mi
• Longview Womack High School — 1.8 mi
• Bethel Baptist Church — 2.0 mi
• Gregg County — 2.1 mi