Town of Hughes Springs

By 1850 Reece Hughes held 50 enslaved people, and by 1860, 147, which the Handbook of Texas says made him the largest planter in Cass County, with more than 2,000 improved acres and 511 bales of cotton. In 1856 he moved to a brick house and built an iron furnace. One local history says enslaved laborers built the house. Hughes opposed secession, and from 1863 to 1865 the Confederate government took over the furnace. He received a pardon, never regained his wealth, and died at Hughes Springs on October 18, 1893.

What the plaque says

Town of Hughes Springs Founded by Reece Hughes (1811-1893), who settled in Texas, 1839. In 1841 he married Elizabeth Rose, daughter of patriot Wm. Pinckney Rose. Her dowry enabled him to start a great plantation. After her death in 1853, he wed her sister, Mrs. J. w. Scott. In 1847 Reece Hughes founded the town of Hughes Springs at a famous chalybeate (iron salt-bearing) spring. It prospered for some years, becoming the site of a large boarding school and a favored place for church camp meetings, but later it declined. In 1878, Hughes' descendants founded present Hughes Springs. (1969)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Daingerfield State Park — 4.8 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.
• Jefferson Historical Museum — 23 mi
  A four-floor museum in Jefferson's 1888-90 federal post office and courthouse, with rooms for African-American history, Jewish heritage, the Caddo and Diamond Bessie, bought by the historical society in 1965 for $8,100.
• Excelsior House Hotel — 23 mi
  A brick-and-timber hotel at 211 West Austin that began as a river captain's boarding house in 1858 and was revived by a garden club in 1959, and still takes guests with rosewood furniture.
• Atlanta State Park — 26 mi
  A shoreline park on Wright Patman Lake, leased from the Army in 1954, where Caddo ancestors farmed the Sulphur River and wagon traces such as the Bobo Ferry trace still cross the woods.

More markers nearby

• Chalybeate Springs — 1.2 mi
• Trammel's Trace — 1.2 mi
• Harris Chapel Cemetery — 4.6 mi
• Morris County — 7.1 mi