Houston County Turns 186
By Greg Ritchie
Messenger Reporter
HOUSTON COUNTY – Happy Birthday, Houston County! It was no doubt just as hot and humid, all those 186 years ago, when the young Republic of Texas declared its first county, the county of Houston. A lot has changed since then, but the legacy of those first settlers, struggling to create the fields and towns we now call home, are well worth honoring and remembering.
Monday, June 12 is the actual anniversary of that day in 1837 when Houston County was officially established – at that time the county encompassed Anderson and Trinity Counties, too, along with parts of Polk and Henderson counties. Today’s Houston County is a small part of that, with only about 1,200 square miles, named for that great hero, General and President Sam Houston.
A copy of the original document establishing our county still figures proudly on the wall of the Houston County Historical Commission’s (HCHC) office in downtown Crockett. The county government provides space and utilities, while all the hard work is done by an ever-diminishing group of local volunteers.
“Our mission is to promote and protect the cultural and historical resources and promote tourism,” said Wanda Jordan who heads up the HCHC. “We’re not a museum – that’s up the road. We store facts and data. We help get historical markers and try to provide information.”
Jordan met with The Messenger in their large office, filled with old books, photos, copies of documents and the millions of stories of those who were born, lived and died in the county. With 186 years under its belt, Houston County has history oozing from every field and street corner. Those who give their time to the HCHC try to preserve not only the cold historical facts, but the rich tapestry of stories of the men and women who struggled and often died to make this place what it is.
“All the books are full of names and dates but they don’t tell you a story like the person you sit down with and who tells you about what they did in their life,” Jordan explained. “Not so much what they did for a living, but how they played and why they went to school and what they ate and how they survived the depression. What happened when all the men went off to World War Two – these stories are what makes history come alive and people become real.”
Much like other organizations, the HCHC has found volunteerism to be a dying idea, with help needed for people who call looking for everything from genealogical information to who built their 100-year-old house. State authorities wanted to deem every house and building over 50-years-old as a historical building – but in a place like Crockett – even the “newer” homes can be older than that.
“I think when it took both a mother and a father to have full-time jobs, nobody had time to volunteer. They don’t have any time to do anything else. So the volunteer pool becomes older people and you will see a small crew, a core of the same people, and most of them are older,” Jordan lamented. “Maybe just because of the family values people have lost. They’ve lost the significance of what it took to get us through the depression, to get us through World War Two; to survive Vietnam with all the stuff that went on there. And unless we can preserve those stories, we’re probably destined to repeat some of those things.”
As Jordan points out, in the long march of history, 186 years isn’t that long and the people who first came to these piney woods were just like us, they just played with different toys and had different technologies. One marvels today how using only their hands and whatever animals they had on hand, they were able to clear much of that land and create the fields and homesteads we still occupy today.
The Messenger wishes a heart-felt happy birthday to our home, Houston County. Many born and raised here, tracing their lineage back to those first pioneers – others happy to have found this unique place in all the world.
As young Dorothy once noted, there’s no place like home and it is our generation’s turn to not only preserve and honor the history of those who came before us, but maybe even create a little of our own.
Greg Ritchie can be reached at [email protected]
