Athens, Texas

Everything Athens is known for

6 songs mention this city 5 artists from here

Athens, Texas, a city in Henderson County, is known as the "Black-Eyed Pea Capital of the World" and is also recognized as the birthplace of the hamburger. While not a major music hub, Athens is home to several artists, including hip-hop artist Tay Money and country musicians Frank Foster, Jake Penrod, and Mark Winston Hagood. The city is also mentioned in songs like "(We’re Not) The Jet Set" by George Jones.

With four artists calling it home and three songs mentioning it, Athens, Texas, has a notable, if understated, connection to the music world.

Music in Athens

Songs About Athens

(We're Not) The Jet Set
George Jones & Tammy Wynette
55%
"Rome, Georgia, Athens, Texas, and Paris, Tennessee"
(We’re Not) The Jet Set
George Jones
51%
"Athens, Texas"
With Crippled Wings
Lift to Experience
35%
"From Athens to London to Paris to Rhome"
Bubba Sparxxx
Bubba Sparxxx
7%
"I just hitch hiked my way from Athens to Cascade"
Virginia Highlands
West 22nd
6%
"Up to Athens to catch the game"
Those Feat’ll Steer Ya Wrong Sometimes
Little Feat
4%
"Athens, Gouldbusk, Troy, and Miami"

Artists From Athens

T
Tay Money
hip-hop
F
Frank Foster
country
J
Jake Penrod
country
R
Roland Whitt
country
M
Mark Winston Hagood
country

Rivers & Roads in Song near Athens

Songs written about the waterways and highways that run near Athens.

Trinity River 11 songs Kickapoo Creek 4 songs Neches River 2 songs Interstate 20 13 songs Sabine River 13 songs Interstate 45 8 songs

History of Athens

Democracy With Boundaries RoadyGoat

You're in Athens, Texas, so here's the ancient Athens tangent behind the name: classical Athens developed direct democratic institutions in which eligible male citizens debated and voted rather than electing representatives for every decision. Women, enslaved people, and resident foreigners were excluded, so calling it the birthplace of democracy should not imply modern universal participation. Councils, assemblies, juries, lotteries, offices, and public argument created influential experiments alongside empire and inequality. Modern governments borrowed words and ideals while redesigning the electorate and scale. Athens matters not because it invented a finished system, but because it made political participation a problem later societies kept revisiting.

Athena and the Parthenon RoadyGoat

You're in Athens, Texas, so here's the ancient Athens tangent behind the name: ancient Athens took its name from Athena in Greek tradition, while a famous myth stages a contest between Athena and Poseidon for patronage of the city. The Parthenon, built in the fifth century before the common era, honored Athena on the Acropolis. Its columns and proportions look regular but include subtle curves and adjustments that correct optical effects. Greek column orders, Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian, became a reusable architectural vocabulary across later courthouses, banks, museums, and capitols. A Texas county seat can therefore share a name with a city whose stone language appears across American civic buildings.

Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle RoadyGoat

You're in Athens, Texas, so here's the ancient Athens tangent behind the name: Socrates wrote no surviving books; much of what we know comes through students and contemporaries, especially Plato. His questioning method challenged claims of knowledge and helped lead to his trial and execution. Plato built dialogues and founded the Academy. Aristotle studied with Plato, tutored Alexander, and wrote across logic, ethics, politics, biology, rhetoric, and physics. Their ideas shaped later science and government, but modern knowledge also corrected many of their conclusions. Studying them means learning durable questions and arguments, not treating ancient authority as automatically right.

Sid Williams Richardson

1891

Born in Athens on April 25, 1891, Sid Williams Richardson became known as the “Billionaire Bachelor.” When he was 16, Sid traveled to Louisiana, to purchase cattle with money he saved. A natural trader and negotiator, Richardson sold the calves once he returned to Athens and tripled his money, making $3,500. Following high school, Sid briefly attended Baylor University in Waco and Simmons (now Hardin-Simmons) University in Abilene. In 1909, Sid’s brother-in-law helped him get a job with an oil well supply company in Wichita Falls where he worked as a salesman, oil scout, lease purchaser and, by 1917, an independent oil producer. In 1919, Richardson partnered with his long-time friend Clint Murchison to buy land and lease or sell the lands to oil companies seeking new areas to drill. Sid’s finances fluctuated as he lost and gained wealth but he persisted. In 1929, he discovered the keystone field in Winkler County, drilling 80 straight wells without a dry hole in what would become one of the largest oil fields in Texas and making Richardson one of the most successful independent oil men in the country. In 1936, Sid purchased San Jose Island, five miles off the Gulf Coast from Rockport, Texas, where he built the only home he ever owned. He hosted Pres. Franklin Roosevelt there in May 1937 during his visit to Texas. Pres. Roosevelt later sought Richardson’s council on the nation’s petroleum reserves during WWII. Sid was a close friend of Gen. Dwight Eisenhower following the war, entertaining him and Lyndon Johnson at San Jose Island. The island was used as a location to raise Texas Longhorn cattle to ensure their preservation. Sid was named to the National Petroleum Council, owned a chain of drug stores, a hotel and a television station, and assisted local charities. Sid died on September 30, 1959, and is buried in Athens.

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Clinton Williams Murchison, Sr.

1890

Clint W. Murchison, Sr. was born April 11, 1895, in Tyler to John W. and Clara (Williams) Murchison. His grandfather, T.F. Murchison, was one of the earliest settlers to arrive in Athens and established the first bank in Henderson County in 1890. Following the death of T.F. Murchison, control of the bank passed to his sons. After a short stint at Trinity University in Waxahachie, Clint returned to Athens to assist with the family bank. Clint enlisted in the army and served stateside as a lieutenant during World War I. Discharged in 1919, Clint accepted an invitation from his friend and fellow Athenian Sid Richardson to join him as a lease trader in the booming Burkburnett oilfield near Wichita Falls. In 1920, Clint married Anne Morris from Tyler and they started a family, having three sons. After the tragic death of Anne in 1926, Clint decided to move to Dallas to continue wheeling and dealing. Nationally recognized companies that he founded included American Liberty Oil, Southern Union Gas, Delhi-Taylor, Florida gas and Trans-Canada pipelines. In 1943, Murchison married Virginia Long. They often returned to Athens and their beloved Glad Oaks Estate. He diversified his holdings into life insurance, banking, publishing, real estate, ranching and railroads. When his health began to deteriorate in the early 1960s, he retired to Glad Oaks, frequenting local cattle sales and inspecting his ranches in the area. He passed away in 1969. Clint Murchison, Sr. was one of the most significant oil magnates of the Texas oil boom. His influence reached not only the oil industry, but many other areas of business and commerce.

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Henderson, James Pinckney

1836

James Pinckney Henderson, statesman, soldier, and first governor of the state of Texas, the son of Lawson and Elizabeth (Carruth) Henderson, was born in Lincolnton, North Carolina, on March 31, 1808. He attended Lincoln Academy and the University of North Carolina, studied law, and was admitted to the bar in 1829. After serving as aide-de-camp and major in the North Carolina militia in 1830, he was elected colonel of a regiment. He moved to Canton, Mississippi, in 1835, became interested in news of the Texas Revolution , and began enlistments for the Texas service. He arrived at Velasco, Texas, on June 3, 1836, and was commissioned by David G. Burnet as brigadier general and sent to the United States to recruit for the Texas army. Henderson organized a company in North Carolina and sent it to Texas, reputedly at his own expense. Upon his return to Texas in November 1836, he was appointed attorney general of the republic under Sam Houston and in December 1836 succeeded Stephen F. Austin as secretary of state. Early in 1837 Henderson was appointed Texas minister to England and France and was commissioned particularly to secure recognition and treaties of amity and commerce. Largely through his efforts both England and France entered into trade agreements with the republic and ultimately recognized Texas independence. While in France, Henderson met Frances Cox of Philadelphia, whom he married in London in October 1839. He returned to Texas in 1840 and set up a law office at San Augustine. In 1844 he was sent to Washington, D.C., to work with Isaac Van Zandt in negotiating a treaty of annexation with the United States. The treaty was signed on April 12, 1844, but was rejected by the United States Senate on June 8, 1844, and Henderson, over his protest, was ordered home by President Houston. Henderson was a member of the Convention of 1845 , was elected governor of Texas in November 1845, and took office in February 1846. With the declaration of the Mexican War and the organization of Texas volunteers, the governor asked permission of the legislature to take personal command of the troops in the field. He led the Second Texas Regiment at the battle of Monterrey and was appointed a commissioner to negotiate for the surrender of that city. Later he served with the temporary rank of major general of Texas volunteers in United States service from July 1846 to October 1846. After the war he resumed his duties as governor but refused to run for a second term. He returned to his private law practice in 1847. After election by the Texas legislature to the United States Senate to succeed Thomas J. Rusk , Henderson served in the Senate from November 9, 1857, until his death, on June 4, 1858. He was buried in the Congressional Cemetery, Washington. In 1930 his remains were reinterred in the State Cemetery in Austin. Henderson County, established in 1846, was named in his honor.

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Reynolds, Carl Nettles

1927

Carl Nettles Reynolds, Major League Baseball player, was born to a farming family in LaRue, Henderson County, Texas, on February 1, 1903. He was the fourth child of Robert Peel Reynolds and Ann Elizabeth (Nettles) Reynolds. Reynolds attended the Alexander Institute (later Lon Morris College, closed in 2012) in Jacksonville, Texas. Moving on to Southwestern University in Georgetown, he was a multi-sports star and earned letters in baseball, football, basketball, and track. Primarily a shortstop on the baseball team, Reynolds was discovered during a game between Southwestern and Trinity College in Waxahachie in 1926 by Roy and Bessie Largent, a husband-and-wife scouting team employed by the Chicago White Sox. Roy Largent had come to the game to scout a Trinity pitcher but was impressed by Reynolds, who was subsequently signed by the duo. In early 1927 Reynolds, who had become a football and basketball coach at Lon Morris College, resigned to join the White Sox spring training camp in Shreveport. Reynolds's first stop as a professional was close to home, as the White Sox assigned him to the Palestine Pals of the Class D Lone Star League. Converted to an outfielder, he led the team in hits (180) and batting average (.372). Intrigued, the White Sox called Reynolds up for the final month of the season. He made his big-league debut on September 1, 1927, against the Cleveland Indians and got his first big league hit the next day. In 1928 Reynolds had his first full season with the White Sox, for whom he hit .323 in part-time duty. Promoted to full-time starter (primarily in right field) in 1929, he hit .317 and led the team in runs batted in (RBIs), albeit with a mere sixty-seven (the lack of offensive power was a major reason for the team's 59-93 record). After the season, on November 9, 1929, Reynolds married eighteen-year-old Ruth Matilda Dayvault, who later became a nurse. They had two sons, Carl Jr. (born 1934) and Robert (born 1942). In 1930 Reynolds had his best season. He drove home 104 runs while batting .359 with 202 hits, including eighteen triples and twenty-two home runs. Three of those home runs were consecutive-including two against future Hall-of-Famer Red Ruffing-and took place on July 2 in the second game of a doubleheader against the New York Yankees at Yankee Stadium. After Reynolds slipped to .290 due to injuries in 1931, the White Sox traded him to the Washington Senators. While with the Senators in 1932, Reynolds was involved in an incident that made headlines nationwide. During the first game of a July 4 doubleheader against the Yankees in Washington, Reynolds crashed into Yankee catcher Bill Dickey while scoring. It wasn't clear that Reynolds had touched the plate, however, so his teammates in the Senators' dugout yelled at him to go back and do so. Dickey, who had been knocked out in a play at the plate during a recent game, thought Reynolds was returning to take another shot at him, so he punched him. This was the only blow struck, but it broke Reynolds's jaw. American League President Will Harridge fined Dickey $1,000 and suspended him for thirty days. With his jaws wired shut, Reynolds was out for almost six weeks. The injury led to a life-threatening incident. On July 19 Reynolds was in a taxicab when he became ill and started to vomit. Thinking quickly, his wife snipped the wires with a pair of manicure scissors so Reynolds could open his mouth, thus averting death by aspiration. When the Yankees returned to Washington in August, Reynolds and Dickey were both back in action, and police officers were stationed on the field to deter any misconduct. The players remained docile. Reynolds finished the 1932 season with a creditable offensive year (a .305 batting average in 406 at bats). Nevertheless, the Senators traded him to the St. Louis Browns before the 1933 season. Reynolds responded with a decent season (a .286 batting average in 475 at bats), but there were few witnesses. The combination of the Great D

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J.B. Henry "The Pea Man"

1900

Introduced in the United States in the early eighteenth century, black-eyed peas, also known as cowpeas, served primarily as animal feed on farms. The hardships of the Civil War, including the scarcity of food in the south, led to increased human consumption of black-eyed peas. John Benjamin Henry, Sr. capitalized on this phenomenon and pioneered a nationwide commercial market for the peas as a staple of southern cuisine. Born in 1866 in the Pine Grove community, southeast of Athens, J.B. Henry worked in a general merchandise store where he saw the economic opportunities in shipping dried black-eyed peas. Around 1900, he started receiving negative feedback from customers who complained of weevil damage to the peas. Through trial and error, he and his wife, Josephine, solved the problem by creating his first commercial dehydrating process in 1906. Henry dissolved his general merchandise partnership in 1910 to focus on his wholesale distribution of black-eyed peas. Shortly thereafter, he placed a large ad in the Athens Review proclaiming that he was “the pea man.” In 1913, Henry leased land from the Cotton Belt Railroad for a new processing plant capable of handling and storing forty carloads of peas. By 1924, the Henry Pea Company handled several hundred cars annually. To highlight the growth of the business, he shipped a sack of peas via the barge Texas Steer from Trinidad, Texas, to the Gulf of Mexico, up the Mississippi River and on to Chicago, Illinois. He never retired but passed away in October 1940 from heart trouble and is buried in the Athens City Cemetery. J.B. Henry revolutionized the humble cowpea into a traditional southern staple. (2017)

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Denius, Franklin Wofford

1944

Franklin Wofford Denius, highly-decorated World War II veteran, philanthropist, attorney, and Austin businessman, played a significant role in the development of Austin in the 1950s and 1960s. Born in Uniontown, Pennsylvania, on January 4, 1925, he was the only child of Frances (Cain) Denius and Samuel F. Denius, a dentist and oil entrepreneur. When he was still an infant, Franklin and his family moved to his mother's hometown of Athens, Texas, where his father invested in the oil and gas industry . The family lived with his maternal grandparents, Smith M. and Mattie (Wofford) Cain, and by the mid-1930s his parents divorced. His uncles John and Wofford Cain assumed the role of father figures and influenced his education and career. When thirteen years old, Denius enrolled in Schreiner Military Institute in Kerrville, Texas, and completed high school and one semester of college. At the age of seventeen, he enlisted in the U.S. Army in the summer of 1942. Due to his age and education, the army sent him to The Citadel in Charleston, South Carolina, where he completed two semesters of college until he was called to active duty. Denius completed basic and instruments-and-survey training at Camp Roberts in California, then travelled to England in January 1944 for Ranger training in preparation for Operation Overlord, the codename for the Allied forces' plan to invade German-occupied Western Europe at Normandy, France. He was assigned as a forward artillery observer to Battery C of the 230th Field Battalion of the Thirtieth Infantry Division (dubbed "Old Hickory") but landed with the Twenty-ninth Infantry on Omaha Beach as part of the second wave of the D-Day invasion in June 1944. Denius, called "Tex" by his fellow soldiers, saw combat with his assigned company at Saint-Lô, the Battle of the Bulge, and the Battle of Mortain, and followed up the carpet bombing for Operation Cobra to witness the liberation of Paris. At Mortain, Denius, members of Company C, along with other companies of the Thirtieth Infantry defended the U.S. Army's hold of Hill 314, a priority to slow the German counteroffensive. During the battle, however, five German armored divisions completely surrounded the hill and cut off and barraged the U. S. soldiers with heavy fire for six days. Dubbed the "Lost Battalion," they suffered heavy casualties and depleting stores of food, water, and medical supplies. Since efforts to air drop supplies failed to reach them, Denius coordinated with other observation teams of nearby artillery units to deliver supplies to his men by using hollowed-out artillery shells typically used to disperse propaganda. For his war service, he received four Silver Stars, two Purple Hearts, a Presidential Citation, the Belgian and French Croix de Guerre, and Chevalier de la Légion d'Honneur. He was discharged in 1946. After the war, Denius enrolled at the University of Texas. In 1949 he graduated with degrees in law and business and married Charmaine Hooper of Athens, Texas, on November 19, 1949. That same year he joined the Austin law firm of Looney, Clark, and Moorhead-a firm noted for having powerful political clients, including President Lyndon Baines Johnson . Denius became a named partner in 1960 and stayed at the practice until he began his own firm in 1976. He worked for Lyndon Johnson on his personal business affairs and over time became a close friend, even attending Johnson's Inaugural Ball in 1965. Specializing in oil, gas, and utility law, Denius represented many national companies in front of the Texas Railroad Commission and negotiated municipal contracts for gas, transit, phone, and cable television services with the city of Austin. Denius served as a director of the Aztec Oil and Gas Company and the Delhi-Taylor Oil Corporation and president of the Southern Union Gas Company, founded by his uncle Wofford Cain and Clint Murchison . Recognized for his civic and business leadership early in life, he was name "Austin's outstan

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Things to Do in Athens

day trip
Day Trip to Athens 🤿 (FULL EPISODE) S6 E6

Featured on The Daytripper — a full-episode local travel guide.

Everything Near Athens

242 stories, landmarks & places within ~20 miles — the nearest 200 are listed here — the same local lore RoadyGoat plays as you drive through.

Explore Athens on the Map
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