The Historic Persimmon Grove and Capt. Hill's Military Camp

The regiment these men joined has a documented record. The Handbook of Texas says the Ninth Texas Infantry was organized November 4, 1861, from companies raised in Northeast Texas and mustered into Confederate service on December 1. At Shiloh it carried 226 officers and men into battle and reported fourteen killed, forty-two wounded and eleven missing. At Murfreesboro on December 31, 1862, it took 323 into action; eighteen were killed and 102 wounded. It served in the Army of the Mississippi and the Army of Tennessee longer than any other Texas infantry regiment.

What the plaque says

The Historic Persimmon Grove and Capt. Hill's Military Camp Up to 1860, pioneers found here a grand 100-square-mile prairie overgrown with high grass. The grove of persimmons 100 yards west of this spot formed an island on the north-central edge of the prairie. The locality's only trees, the persimmon grove was a gathering place where settlers swapped news or livestock and followed other casual pursuits. When Texas and other states seceded from the Union and prepared for war, Lamar Cavalry Company No. 2 was organized here on June 10, 1861, by Methodist lay minister and Mexican war veteran James Hill (1827-90). Capt. Hill drilled his men for several months on the prairie beside the grove. Then it became known that militia laws would forbid such cavalry units to leave the state of Texas. Disbanding, Hill's men formed Company E, 9th Regiment, Texas Infantry, and were mustered into Confederate service on Nov. 26, 1861. In Ector's Brigade, French's Division, army of Lieutenant General Polk, they fought at Shiloh, Murfreesboro, Chickamauga, and other actions. Farmers later plowed up the prairie and planted trees that obscured the persimmon grove. Yet is has become a landmark of pioneer days. (1977)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Sam Bell Maxey House State Historic Site — 15 mi
  The Italian-villa-style house in Paris, finished in 1868 with a lawyer's fees, where a Confederate major general turned U.S. senator and two later generations of his family lived.
• Evergreen Cemetery — 15 mi
  Paris's town cemetery since 1866, with a carved-stone gallery that includes the Babcock monument in cowboy boots, and the grave of the three-year-old whose death led to the 1893 lynching of Henry Smith.
• Eiffel Tower — 17 mi
  A 65-foot Eiffel Tower with a red cowboy hat, built by the local welders' union in 1993 beside Paris's Love Civic Center.
• Sam Rayburn House State Historic Site — 24 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.

More markers nearby

• Jones' Mill Community — 5.7 mi
• Smiley-Woodfin Native Prairie Grassland — 6.9 mi
• Tridens Prairie — 7.4 mi
• Allen's Chapel Methodist Church and Cemetery — 7.8 mi