Daingerfield,
the pleasant county seat of Morris County, was named for Captain London Daingerfield,
supposedly a native of Nova Scotia, but beyond that and a few other facts, Captain
Daingerfield remains a mystery man.
Morris County pioneers told stories
of finding Daingefield’s millstone and water well, which pre-dated local Anglo-American
history. These items were likely made by Acadian settlers from Louisiana, but
they returned to the territory because of Indian hostilities.
A spring
known locally as Daingerfield Spring was once a popular camp used by Indians
such as the Choctaws and Caddoes. Around 1830, Captain Daingerfield and a company
of 100 men attacked an Indian village at the spring and, after a long, bloody
fight, the Indians were driven away.
Local history says Captain Daingerfield
settled his family around the spring, but the Indians retaliated, killing Daingerfield,
his wife and children.
The Captain and his family were likely buried nearby
with large flat rocks marking their graves. But as the years passed, the cemetery
and rocks were moved as new homes were built in the area.
In those days,
it was the custom of settlers to plant cedar trees around the graves of their
loved ones. Near the spot where the Daingerfields were buried, large cedars are
now growing.
The problem of finding more about Captain Daingerfield is
compounded by the fact that Morris and the surrounding counties were once a part
of Arkansas.
Army records in Washington have no record of Daingerfield
and, despite the efforts of several historians to unearth more details about the
captain, his family and his fellow soldiers, his disappearance remains one of
the legendary stories of East Texas.
Some
early visitors were not kind to the early town of Daingerfield.
William A. McClintock, who passed through the area in 1846, noted in his diary
that the town consisted of "three or four cabins scarce fit for pigsties."
But by the early 1850s the town began to grow. Sylvia Academy, a private school
for girls, opened around 1850, and in 1852 the Marshall Presbytery of the Cumberland
Presbyterian Church founded Chapel Hill College.
Bob
Bowman's East Texas
October 4, 2010 Column, modified October 14, 2012
A weekly column syndicated
in 109 East Texas newspapers
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