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DAINGERFIELD,
TEXASMorris
County Seat, East
Texas
Highways 11, 49, 259
20 miles SE of Mt.
Pleasant
41 miles N of Longview
Population: 2517(2000) 2,572 (1990) |
History
in a Pecan Shell
The community was named in honor of Capt.
London Daingerfield who was killed in an 1830 battle with Indians on the site
that became the town in the1840s.
A timeline of selected or significant
dates in Daingerfield history:
1846: Post Office granted
1877: Titus
County divided forming Morris County and Daingerfield became county seat.
The Louisiana, Arkansas and Texas came within a half-mile of the town.
1879:
A disastrous fire destroys most of town, prompting relocation of town to the railroad
1904: Population reaches 699
1931: Population reaches 818
Lone Star Steel
and the United States Navy Ordnance Aerophysics Lab open shortly after WWII. |
Daingerfield
Outdoor Attractions Daingerfield
State Park
2 miles east off Hwy 11
Lake
O' the Pines - On Big Cypress Creek
http://www.tpwd.state.tx.us |
Daingerfield,
Texas Stories |
The
Mystery Man by Bob
Bowman
Captain London Daingerfield
Daingerfield,
the 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 Territory, but
they returned to the territory because of Indian hostilities in what became Texas.
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 then 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 scarcely 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.
From
Bob Bowman's East Texas
A weekly column syndicated in 109 East Texas newspapers
The
Poison Spring
by Mike
Cox
On the road leading from Jefferson to Daingerfield there is
a spring known by the old settlers as ‘the poison spring,’” the Texas Republican
reported on June 12, 1852... |
 |
1940s
Morris county map
Courtesy Texas General Land Office |
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