Sophia Porter

Sophia Porter's famous ride may owe much to her own telling. The plaque gives it as fact: she swam her horse across the icy Red River to warn Col. James Bourland. A local historian says she told that tale herself, as an old woman at the Pioneer Festival, along with a story of nursing Sam Houston after San Jacinto. Born Sophia Suttenfield, she married Holland Coffee, then George Butts, then James Porter, whose enslaved workers helped enlarge the plantation. A Sherman preacher kept her out of his church twelve years. She died in 1897, not 1899.

What the plaque says

Sophia Porter (1813-1899) Settled 1839 at Glen Eden, a site now under Lake Texoma, north of here. Husband, Holland Coffee, early trader, built fine home, welcomed 1845-60, U. S. Army officers including Robert E. Lee and Ulysses S. Grant. During Civil War, wined and dined passing Federal scouts, found out they were seeking Col. Jas. Bourland, Confederate defender of Texas frontier. While guests were busy, she slipped out, swam her horse across icy Red River, warned Col. Bourland, helped prevent Federal invasion of North Texas. (1965)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Eisenhower State Park — 5.4 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.
• Eisenhower Birthplace State Historic Site — 11 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.
• Hagerman National Wildlife Refuge — 12 mi
  A 1946 refuge on the Big Mineral Arm of Lake Texoma, laid over land bought for Denison Dam and the site of the vanished railroad town of Hagerman, now a winter stop for geese.
• Choctaw Cultural Center — 14 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.

More markers nearby

• Site of the Trading Post of Holland Coffee — steps away
• Fink — 6.2 mi
• Site of Fort Johnson — 6.5 mi
• Colbert's Ferry — 7.2 mi