Site of the First Courthouse

The log courthouse of 1848 was a rough place, the National Register nomination for the present courthouse says. It had no windows, jurors deliberated under a post oak, and the clerk kept records in his pocket or at home. Judge John L. Miller said the cracks were big enough to throw a wolf through. Arsonists burned the frame building of 1853 on November 14, 1855, to destroy indictment records, and every district court record before that date went with it. Brick came in 1857, a cream-brick building in 1881, and the Beaux Arts courthouse in 1905.

What the plaque says

Site of the First Courthouse The Texas Legislature specified that the seat of Navarro County should be called Corsicana; but the location was not secured until 1848, when this site was donated by David R. Mitchell, James C. Neill, and Thomas Smith. Other structures served briefly as quarters for county business; but the fist actual courthouse was a log cabin erected here in 1848. The 15' by 17' building had the judge's stand in one corner and county clerk's table in another. A two-story frame courthouse replaced the cabin in 1853. (1976)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Petroleum Industry Park — 0.6 mi
  The pipes and drilling tower mark where a city water well struck oil on June 9, 1894, the start of the first Texas field to produce oil and gas in important quantities.
• Blind Lemon Memorial Cemetery — 21 mi
  The Freestone County grave of the Texas blues singer Blind Lemon Jefferson, who recorded for Paramount in Chicago from 1926 and died there in December 1929.
• Ellis County Courthouse — 30 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.

More markers nearby

• Thomas Ingles Smith — steps away
• Jose Antonio Navarro — steps away
• Corsicana in 1860-1872 — steps away
• Judge E. J. Simkins House — steps away