Samuel H. Levingston

Two accounts of Samuel Levingston's yard agree on 1859 and on what the Civil War did to it. It had been building paddle-wheel steamboats for the Sabine, and one history says he converted river steamers into gunboats for the Confederate States Navy. A Leader account says he served in Merriman's Orange County Coast Guard, was sent to New Orleans to build gunboats, and was honorably discharged in June 1865. His son George took over after he retired. The yard that carried the family name closed in 1985, when Levingston Shipbuilding was liquidated.

What the plaque says

Samuel H. Levingston A native of northern Ireland, Samuel H. Levingston was born in 1832, the son of George and Margaret Levingston. At the age of fourteen he left Ireland with his brothers, David and John, and his sister, Margaret. They settled in Apalachicola, Florida, where Samuel Levingston worked as a ship carpenter. There in 1852 he married Asenatha Moore. Shortly before the Civil War began, the Levingstons moved to the area near what is now the city of Orange and established a shipyard on the Sabine River. Samuel Levingston served the Confederate forces during the Civil War as a ship carpenter and a blockade runner. After the war, he returned to Orange and began another shipyard, building paddle wheel boats for hauling cotton and farm products on the Sabine River between Orange and Logansport, LA. Upon his retirement his son George took over the business and developed it into the Levingston Shipbuilding Company. An active civic leader in Orange, Samuel Levingston was involved in the Madison Masonic Lodge and helped found the first Presbyterian church. From 1871 until 1891 he and his family lived on an 11-acre tract of land that later became this city park. Levingston died in 1911 and is buried in Orange's Evergreen Cemetery. (1984)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Stark Museum of Art — 0.9 mi
  A white-marble museum in Orange built by the Stark Foundation and opened in 1978, holding Western art, American Indian art, Audubon's Birds of America and Steuben glass, free to enter.
• Shangri La Botanical Gardens and Nature Center — 1.7 mi
  More than 250 acres on Adams Bayou, begun by H. J. Lutcher Stark in 1937, with garden rooms, a cypress-tupelo swamp, a heronry blind and free pontoon tours in season.
• Museum of the Gulf Coast — 18 mi
  Port Arthur's regional museum in a former bank building: fossils, Native Americans, the petroleum story, a 125-foot history mural and Halls of Fame for musicians, athletes and artists.
• Spindletop-Gladys City Boomtown Museum — 21 mi
  A re-created oil boomtown on the Lamar University campus, with a derrick, period shops, a 1941 granite monument and an optional re-enactment of the January 1901 Lucas gusher.

More markers nearby

• Captain George M. Levingston — 0.4 mi
• Samuel Wallace Sholars, M.D. — 0.4 mi
• Dr. Samuel M. Brown — 0.4 mi
• John Thomas Stark — 0.4 mi