Titus County C. S. A.

Enslaved people numbered 280 of Titus County's 2,440 residents in 1847 and 2,439 of 9,648 by 1860, over a quarter of the county. The 1859 tax roll listed 1,923 enslaved people valued at $1,142,850, about 47 percent of the county's tax base. Cotton rose from 292 bales in 1850 to 5,129 in 1860, and corn from 66,000 bushels to 326,385. The Handbook of Texas gives the secession vote as 411 to 285, and notes that some local historians count 1,500 Titus County men in Confederate or state units.

What the plaque says

Titus County C. S. A. Created and organized in 1846. Named for pioneer resident Andrew Jackson Titus (1814-1855), who opened county's first road, to river port in Jefferson. Until after the Civil War, Titus County also included areas of present-day Franklin and Morris counties. Six mail routes going by horseback, had pack mules to follow lead horse. High waters in creeks and Sulphur River often halted travel. Record time to haul cotton to Jefferson was 5 days by ox wagon. In 1860 had 9,648 people. Voted 411 to 275 in favor of secession. Sent 10 military companies to Civil War. While home tables drew heavily on game foods (deer, wild turkeys, pigeons, bear), county furnished Confederate commissary with beef, butter, corn, rice, cotton, oats, sweet potatoes, flour, cornmeal, leather, lumber, pottery, tobacco, whiskey and wool. Wartime manufacturing plants included 9 sawmills, 8 gristmills, tanneries and a steam powered distillery. Mount Pleasant had a Confederate transportation depot employing blacksmiths, carpenters, harness makers, wheelwrights. It procured equipment and horses and mules, and made gear, harness and wagons for the purpose of moving men, army supplies and government owned cotton. (1965)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Lake Bob Sandlin State Park — 10 mi
  A 1987 state park on a 9,000-acre reservoir, where a Republic of Texas stockade called Fort Sherman stood in 1838 and the Caddo lived from A.D. 800 to 1860, now with fishing piers, trails and cabins.
• Daingerfield State Park — 19 mi
  A pine-and-hardwood park built in 1935-39 by a white and a Black Civilian Conservation Corps company, with a dammed lake, Bass Lodge and a 2.4-mile loop trail around the water.

More markers nearby

• Henry Clay Thruston — 0.3 mi
• The Rev. Edward Hollister Green — 6.4 mi
• Caddo Indian Communities in the Cypress Creek Drainage — 7.1 mi
• Camp County — 8.2 mi