Rural Farms and Communities Before Camp Swift

Sayersville, one of the communities cut by the camp, was founded in 1886 by land developer William Elliott as Sayers, beside the new Missouri, Kansas and Texas line, and took its longer name with the post office in 1889. Meant as a cotton town, it turned to cordwood and, after 1913, to lignite. It also supplied workers at the Lasher brick factory, which closed in 1915. Natural gas ended the cordwood trade in the 1920s, and by 1940 about fifty people remained, a population the Handbook describes as historically biracial.

What the plaque says

Rural Farms and Communities Before Camp Swift As the United States prepared for the possibility of war in 1940, the government selected this area for establishment of what would be Camp Swift, a training and shipment facility. The federal government quickly acquired property, giving landowners 30 days to leave and move structures. The displacement resulted not only in the loss of farms but also early rural communities, some dating to 19th-century settlement. Outlying areas of larger communities, including Sayersville, Elgin, McDade, Oak Hill and Waysie, were affected, as were dispersed rural settlements within the camp area, including Duck Pond, Piney, Spring Branch and Dogwood. Most of the displaced residents were farmers, although some worked in other occupations. Antoine Aussiloux, born in France, began operating a local winery in the late 19th century that prospered until refrigerated railroad cars began to deliver beer in the 1890s and later anti-saloon leagues and prohibition eliminated legalized alcohol production. Another area resident, Frank Dennison, constructed nearby facilities for lignite mining, part of the Sayers Mine. He built a village to house miners, and it was associated with a graveyard known as the Mexican Cemetery. Other area burial grounds located within present Camp Swift included Chandler Cemetery, New Hope Cemetery and a single gravesite. After World War II, the War Assets Administration began to sell some of the land, but many residents were unable to repurchase their former properties. The government eventually retained about 11,500 acres of the approximately 25,000-acre Camp Swift for use by the National Guard. Today, many residents continue to live in this area, and visible reminders throughout Camp Swift chronicle the history of the settlements displaced by wartime activities. (2007)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Bastrop State Park — 9.0 mi
  The westernmost loblolly pines in the United States, cut off from the East Texas forest by a hundred miles of post oak, burned almost entirely in 2011 and growing back.
• Texas Wendish Heritage Museum — 22 mi
  A museum at Serbin of the Wends, a Slavic people from Lusatia whose congregation of nearly 600 crossed on the Ben Nevis in 1854, losing seventy-three to cholera on the way.
• George Washington Carver Museum — 24 mi
  East Austin's museum of Black history and culture, grown from a segregated branch library moved across town in 1933, with a permanent exhibit on Juneteenth at its core.
• Texas State Cemetery — 24 mi
  A hill east of the Capitol that began with one general's grave in 1851 and now holds Stephen F. Austin, governors, Barbara Jordan and more than 2,000 Confederate veterans and widows.

More markers nearby

• Camp Swift — 1.3 mi
• McDade — 5.4 mi
• Three Oaks (Goerlitz) Cemetery — 5.6 mi
• Mina Ward School — 8.1 mi