A HISTORY OF RUSK CO.

(With a touch of Texas history thrown in for good measure!)



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Rusk County is the only County to have had four men who lived here who later had Texas Counties named after them.

   James Smith, Smith County, Tyler, Texas and is buried in Smith Park, Henderson, TX.

   Matthew Duncan Ector, Ector County, Odessa, TX. Only General in Civil War from Rusk Co. and is buried in Marshall, TX.

   William B. Ochiltree...... Ochiltree County,  Perryton, TX.

  William Wright Morris, Morris County, Daingerfield, TX. Born and raised in Rusk Co. was prominent in bringing railroads to Texas .

There are many notable people buried in the "Old" City Cemetery of Henderson. Included are two former Presidents of Texas A&M, R. T. Milner and Thomas Gathright. The founder of the Pilsbury Baking Company, Timothy Pillsbury, a Senator in the Republic of Texas and later United States Congressman from Texas, is also buried here.

After the Alamo & the subsequent victory at San Jacinto, the newly formed Republic of Texas government set about trying to establish a working country with a war-time government. This meant they would need money & lots of it. Unfortunately most of the Texans who were already here were too poor in real money to pay taxes & had been using a barter system for the most part to buy and sell needed goods. In order to raise taxes, the Texas government developed a scheme for getting more people who would have money into the state. The only resource they had on hand was land, but boy did they have a lot of land!

The 'carrot' the government held out to the citizens of the United States was almost impossible to turn down. Huge landgrants were handed out to all newcomers - free of charge. When I say huge, I mean HUGE! It is always said that things are always bigger & better in Texas, and this a great example of this. Each family was given 1,280 acres - that's 2 square miles folks - absolutely free! A single male didn't make out as great. He only recieved a measly 640 acres.

Because of the generous land policy, the population jumped from around 35,000 in 1836 (the year of independence) to more than 140,000 by the time Texas joined the United States in 1847. During the 13 years after becoming a state (by 1860), the population quadrupled to an astonishing 604, 000. In 1850, there were over 8,000 people in Rusk Co., alone.

Most of the people (about 90%) who came into Texas were not foreigners, but from the United States. The overwhelming portion of these were from the southern states. Although many who came to Texas were simple farmers, there were also tradespeople & wealthy individuals who came in with their slaves. There were also a large influx of debters & criminals who were running away from the law, creditors or wives & families. The message "G.T.T." meaning "Gone To Texas" was commonly found scribbled in walls or scraps of paper in the previous homes & buisnesses of people who were fleeing from sheriffs or others who came to this great state for less questionable reasons.

To get into Texas, most new settlers came by wagon. This was primarily because of the large amount of money required for ship passage which was usually only used as transportation by the wealthy. To travel by wagon took a great amount of perserverance since the roads back then were often just deep muddy ruts which sucked in the wheels in rainy weather & hot & dusty in the sweltering summer heat. The horses or oxen and wagon wheels would kick up dust when in was dry weather that would coat everything in a fine film of dirt, causing the young ones to choke & fight the constant dust which drifted into their eyes. Any food cooked on the trail was expected to be eaten with the grit from the dirt grinding against their teeth with each bite. It was often a challenge to get to the next 'watering hole' or stream before the water they carried with them ran out.

Nearby Nacogdoches is the oldest town settled in Texas by citizens of the United States. The old road, El Camino Real, ran from Natchitoches, Louisiana into Nacogdoches, Texas & from there down to Bastop, Texas & then to New Braunfels, San Antonio & finally exiting the state at Presidio de Rio Grande. Many people came through Nacogdoches & then on into Rusk Co. from this trail. This is the reason so many people from Louisiana are found in the area. There were also several other important roads that were in the area, these being Trammel's Trace, Grand Bluff Road & Old Wire Road. Trammel's Trace was the most important of the 3, connecting

The homes back then were simple affairs with only the barest of basics for the most part. They were simple log structures until lumber mills came into the area, at which time wood boards began to be used predominantly for building. The first brick home in the county was that of Dr. Prior in the Church Hill community in the 1850s.

By the late 1850s, the people of Henderson were beginning to realize that a civil war was looming. Northerners would come south stirring up trouble (see "Henderson Burns to the Ground") The 1860 census shows that Rusk Co. had the highest population of any other county in Texas. Out of the overall total of 15,800 people, 9,670 were white & 6,132 were slaves. The high number of slaves in this area probably had a lot to do with the very strong seccession feelings of the time. Rusk Co. citizens voted about 10 to 1 for leaving the United States.

The Civil War helped bring about a lot of changes in Rusk Co. The prosperity the citizens had experienced before the war was gone in most cases, either because of the war, or because they had lost everything in the great fire of Henderson in 1860.

In the late 1870s, land was selling from $5-$15 per acre if it was improved or $1.50-$2.50 if unimproved. The Henderson & Overton Branch RR had been completed by 1878 and farmers from the surrounding counties were shipping their cotton & crops out from Henderson, bringing a little more prosperity into the area, although overall, the region remained slightly impoverished.

Then, in 1878, as has happened in so many other counties, the courthouse in Henderson burned. People in the county immediately set about erecting another one on the same foundation. (A new one was built in 1928.) In 1880, the Rusk Co. News was established by O. W. Dobson.. E. W. Harris took over the East Texas Beacon & the Henderson Times was going strong.

The county lines have shifted throughout the years. Henderson was at one time the second largest county in the state, but there have been many portions removed throughout the years so it no longer has that distinction.

The time between 1890-1930 saw more people coming into the county. Most of the people in the area were farmers, raising cotton, and all types of food crops & even some tobacco. Lumber was also a big industry during that time. The county still remained rather poor overall.

The year of 1930 changed everything. Oil was discovered! The first oilwell was drilled in 1911 by the Millville Oil Co. on the east side of Henderson. Then in 1927 "Dad" Joiner came to Rusk Co. to drill, against the advise of geologists & other experts. Instead of drilling on the east side of Henderson, though, he drilled the first well, the Daisy Bradford No. 1, about 6 miles west of Henderson. It was dry. They dug up some more money somehow (times were really hard then & money was a constant problem) & throughout the latter part of 1928 & 1929 drilled a second well about 100 yards northwest of the Daisy 1 & named it the Daisy Bradford No. 2. It was dry. That one took the better part of a year to drill because of financial hardships. Joiner was so sure he was in the right area that he sacrificed much of his 10,000 acre block in order to finance a 3rd well, the Daisy Bradford No. 3. They had to use mostly 2nd hand equipment & weren't able to pay the worker's salaries a lot of the time, but they perservered. Drilling was stalled in Jan., 1930 at a little over 1500 feet & then resumed again in the spring. On Sept. 5, 1930, the drillbit hit Woodbine sand & the core came up dripping with oil. Finally, on Oct. 3, at a depth of 3592, the Daisy 3 came in, bringing in a phenominal 300 barrels a day. A person at the site at the time described putting a handkerchief over the top of the hole & watched it slowly rise. Then there was a roar & the oil went spewing over the top of the derrick.

Overnight, Rusk Co. became a "boom" area. The depression was forgotten. Derricks went up everywhere. Cotton went unpicked in the fields. The field hands who would normally have been out picking the cotton were suddenly finding more money could be made working in the oil fields. People became rich overnight from oil & gas lease royalties. More than 1200 documents were filed in the county clerk's office during the first week after the discovery pertaining to leases & royalties. The streets of Henderson filled with stranges, no longer a sleepy small town. New buildings seemed to pop up every day & traffic jams became an everyday experience. City lots sold for 10 times the amount they had only a month before. It took 6-8 hours, if a person were lucky, to make a single long distance phone call because over 1000 long distance calls a day were being made through the single circuit phone line. People poured into Henderson & the surrounding areas; families in need of jobs, oil field workers, bums, hitch-hikers and others. The ones who could not find work had to depend on charity.

In Dec. of the same year, oil was discovered in Kilgore, which led to what's known as the "richest acre in the world". With the massive amounts of oil being pulled from the ground, there was an almost overnight drop in the price per barrel. The state government enacted a law on Aug. 12, 1931 declaring it illegal to produce more oil than was needed. Unfortunately, the sheriff of Rusk Co. didn't have the police force to enforce the law & had to ask for help from the governor, Ross S. Sterling. Marshall law was declared for Rusk, Gregg, Smith & Upshur Counties & although it slowed down the illegal over-removal of oil (called "hot oil"), it didn't stop it & oil prices dropped to an all time low of 5-6 cents per barrel.

The market eventually recovered & Rusk became a wealthy county in the following years.