Site of Smith Plantation

The Smith brothers' plantation was worked by enslaved people, as the Fannin County Historical Commission's own file says, though the marker does not. Gideon Smith held a 3,000-acre tract. A file written by a local resident says part of it was later broken up and bought by or given to formerly enslaved people. It says a cemetery on the farm, where enslaved people were buried, is still used by Black families around Ravenna. Letha B. Smith, a descendant, wrote a 1996 book titled Blood's Thicker Than Prejudice. The land is private.

What the plaque says

Site of Smith Plantation Gideon Smith (b. 1815), a native of Alabama, moved to Fannin County in 1851 and purchased a 3000-acre tract. He deeded half of the property to his brother John C. Smith, who joined him in 1855. Gideon smith served one term in the Texas Legislature (1857-1858) and participated in the Civil War as a colonel in the Confederate Army. John Smith became a doctor and practiced medicine in the area. Both men were successful planters. Part of the plantation, one of the earliest in the area, has been continuously in production of grain and cattle since 1851. (1980)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Sam Rayburn House State Historic Site — 11 mi
  The two-story farmhouse west of Bonham that the longtime Speaker of the House built in 1916 and kept as his home, left as he lived in it and open as a museum since 1975.
• Eisenhower Birthplace State Historic Site — 16 mi
  The small frame house beside the Katy tracks in Denison where Dwight Eisenhower was born in 1890, bought by townspeople in 1946 and given to Texas in 1958.
• Choctaw Cultural Center — 19 mi
  The Choctaw Nation's history told from the Chahta side at Calera, with galleries from Nanih Waiya to the Trail of Tears and the reservation today, a living village and daily stickball.
• Eisenhower State Park — 21 mi
  A bluff-top park on Lake Texoma opened in 1958 on land leased from the Corps of Engineers, in the Red River country of Fort Johnson, Colbert's Ferry and the Butterfield stages.

More markers nearby

• First Fannin County Settlement — 8.3 mi
• Carson Cemetery — 8.5 mi
• Carpenters Bluff Bridge — 9.2 mi
• Ector Methodist Church — 11 mi