Henderson County C.S.A.

Henderson County strongly supported secession, voting 400 to 49 for it, and sent about 1,000 men into the Confederate Army, with one detachment of 150 having only 13 return alive. Camps of instruction stood at Caldwell's farm, three miles northeast, and at Fincastle, 19 miles southeast of Athens. At Fincastle, a Confederate supply depot stored grain and meat under Capt. Thomas F. Murchison, who also served as county enrolling officer. Wartime manufacturing included earthenware jugs and dishes, while other products for the C.S.A. included cotton, corn, beef, pork, and timber. Cynthia Ann Parker, delivered from Indian captivity in 1860 by a Sul Ross ranger unit, lived at Athens during the war. John H. Reagan, Confederate Postmaster General, had earlier been a surveyor and the first probate judge in Henderson County. Henderson County was also the home of Confederate Major William H. Martin, called “Old Howdy,” who was born in Alabama in 1823, moved to Texas in 1850, served as a state senator from 1853 to 1857, and organized a company here that entered the 4th Texas Infantry and joined Gen. Lee in Virginia in 1861. Known for waving rather than snapping a salute and for bellowing “Howdy” across distinctions of space and rank, Martin later appealed to Jefferson Davis and Gen. Lee to preserve the separate identity of the Texas Brigade after the losses of battles such as Chickamauga. Lee endorsed the brigade, declaring that he had never asked it to hold a position without its holding it, and Davis promised Martin that as long as a man remained to carry the battle flag, it would remain the Texas Brigade.

Athens, Texas · United States