Marion County is in northeastern Texas; its eastern boundary forms a portion of the Louisiana-Texas border. Jefferson, the county’s largest town and its county seat, is seventeen miles north of Marshall, in Harrison County, and fortysix miles west of Shreveport, Louisiana. The county is drained by the Red River basin via the watershed areas of Caddo Lake, Lake o’ the Pines, and Big Cypress, Little Cypress, and Black Cypress bayous.

Marion County was demarked from the southern portion of Cass County by an act of the state legislature on February 8, 1860. Territorial additions in 1863 and 1874 extended its southern boundary to include both banks of Big Cypress Bayou.

The county was named for American Revolutionary War hero Francis Marion, the “Swamp Fox.”

Due to a large natural log-jam and collection of snags on the Red River, known as the Red River Raft, which formed a series of navigable lakes and bayous in the river valleys of Marion County, Jefferson, founded in the early 1840s, rapidly developed a booming river trade with New Orleans. Jefferson quickly became the favored inland Texas port for the deposit and transport of North Texas agricultural produce. Thus, Marion County became the commercial conduit for frontier Texas and did not relinquish this position until the establishment of transcontinental rail links that bypassed its wharves in the mid-1870s.

The acquisition of lucrative Confederate government contracts proved to be a catalyst to the county’s already growing economic fortunes. For example, Kelly Iron Works, established in the antebellum period as a successful producer of agricultural implements, received a commission to manufacture cannonballs and rifles for the Confederate States Ordnance Department. J. B. Dunn’s meat-packing firm was authorized to produce tinned beef for the Confederate commissary.

Cut off from potential competition from eastern industrial firms and protected from invasion by its geographical location, Marion County’s infant manufacturing sector and Jefferson’s riverport commerce continued to expand and thrive throughout the Civil War. The defeat of the Confederacy and the ensuing federal occupation led to the most volatile and tumultuous period in the county’s political history.

On October 4, 1869, George Washington Smith was murdered in Jefferson by a band of vigilantes. Smith’s slaying led to the military occupation of Jefferson by Union troops under the command of Gen. George P. Buell, whose orders were to establish the security of citizens loyal to the United States and to arrest and try Smith’s killers. The action taken by the military tribunal that followed was known as the Stockade Case.

With military protection afforded the black majority, the white Republican minority, through the use of the local Union League, took control of county government. The restoration of white conservative rule, commonly called “redemption,” did not come until 1882 with the election of a Democrat-dominated commissioners’ court. However, despite violence and intimidation aimed at the black majority throughout the remainder of the nineteenth century, blacks continued to deliver Marion County’s majority for the Republican presidential ticket until the white primary effectively disfranchised them in 1898.

In spite of the intense passions engendered by Reconstruction politics, the county’s prominent citizens were able to separate politics and financial necessity, opposing a proposed boycott of Republican businesses in 1869 and 1870. Few disliked the Republicans enough to refuse to do business with them.

Jefferson’s unchallenged monopoly over the trade of approximately twenty northern Texas counties was broken by the construction of two east-west rail routes during the 1870s, linking the Grand Prairie farmlands directly with eastern markets. At this point, the flight of capital and skilled labor from Marion County began in earnest. Between 1870 and 1880 the county lost 138 businesses and began to resemble more nearly the other rural counties contiguous to it.

Marion County did not experience economic growth again until the decade of the 1970s. The prosperity experienced throughout the 1970s was due to a substantial rise of tourism, stimulated by the reconstructed and renovated Jefferson Historic Riverfront District and the recreation opportunities offered by Caddo Lake State Park and Lake o’ the Pines. This influx of tourism caused a boom in the service and retail sectors. By 1983, 67 percent of all employment was in this retail and service sector, up 12 percent over the 1964 figure. Though small manufacturing establishments remained important to the economic health of the county, their share of earnings remained static during the same period. Events like the annual Pilgrimage Celebration, a three-day openhouse tour of some of Jefferson’s more than ninety state-designated historical monuments, homes, hotels, and a museum, account for hundreds of thousands of tourist dollars a year in the local economy.

(The information above is excerpted from the Handbook of Texas, an encyclopedia published by the Texas State Historical Association. The Handbook can be accessed on-line at www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/ online/index.new.html. Copies of the two-volume set may be obtained by contacting the history organization at 512-232-1513.)