Carthage, Texas

Everything Carthage is known for

0 songs mention this city 2 artists from here

Music in Carthage

Songs About Carthage

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Artists From Carthage

P
Perfect Stranger
country Pop: 28
B
Brandon Rhyder
country Pop: 18

Rivers & Roads in Song near Carthage

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

U.S. Route 59 7 songs Sabine River 13 songs Interstate 20 13 songs Interstate 49 3 songs Red River 84 songs

Musical Heritage

Tex Ritter RoadyGoat

Deep in the East Texas piney woods, Panola County put a singing cowboy on a Hollywood horse. Tex Ritter grew up on a farm right here, born in 1905 — and he learned his cowboy songs not out on the range but in a classroom at the University of Texas, from folklorist J. Frank Dobie and song-collector John Lomax. New York handed him the name: cast in a cowboy play, the company started calling him Tex, and it stuck for the rest of his life. He signed to Capitol Records one month after the label opened its doors. He sang the theme to "High Noon" — "Do Not Forsake Me" — and it won the Academy Award. Fifth man ever inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame. And the streak ran in the blood: his son was the actor John Ritter.

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Tex Ritter Museum at the Texas Country Music Hall of Fame RoadyGoat

Carthage, in the East Texas piney woods, built a whole museum inside a fake movie theater — and it's all for one man, Tex Ritter, one of the most famous singing cowboys who ever rode across a screen. Step in and you'll find his boots, his shirts, his guitars and saddles, the old movie posters, the whole career laid out end to end. His cousin, Tommie Ritter Smith, is the one who founded it, tucked inside the Texas Country Music Hall of Fame — which also claims native son Jim Reeves and the singer Johnny Horton, better than fifty stars in all. Doors open Mondays through Saturdays, ten to four, ten dollars to get in. Every August, they throw a festival. A cowboy town that never stopped singing.

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History of Carthage

The Giant Under Carthage RoadyGoat

1936

Beneath Carthage lies one of North America's great natural-gas fields. Gas was first struck here in 1936, when drillers tapped the Pettit formation about 6,000 feet down. Real production waited until 1944, when the Jordan well came in a mile west of town. After World War II the Carthage field grew into one of the largest gas fields in the United States, stretching roughly 48 miles long and 24 miles wide across Panola County. The prize is the Cotton Valley sand, a thick but very tight rock so low in permeability that engineers must fracture it to coax the gas out. Over the decades the field has yielded on the order of 4 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. Panola County remains a top Texas gas producer today, now tapping the deeper Haynesville shale.

How Carthage Got Its Name RoadyGoat

1846

Panola County was created in 1846 from parts of Shelby and Harrison counties, and a settlement called Pulaski, on the east bank of the Sabine River, served as its first temporary seat. In 1848 commissioners chose a spot at the county's geographic center for a permanent capital. Jonathan Anderson, who owned the land, donated 100 acres for the new town. A settler named Spearman Holland is credited with naming it in honor of Carthage, Mississippi, his former home, not the ancient city in North Africa. A post office opened in 1849. That same year, in August, the first courthouse went up on the square, a modest structure built from peeled pine logs and paid for by selling town lots. From those log-cabin beginnings on the East Texas frontier grew the Panola County seat you stand in today.

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Carthage, TX RoadyGoat

Carthage sits nestled in the heart of East Texas, where the land itself tells a story. The rolling hills, rising just a few hundred feet, are draped in a thick blanket of pine. These aren't the dramatic peaks of a mountain range, but gentle swells, a testament to the ancient seabed that once lay here. The soil, sandy and often acidic, favors the loblolly and shortleaf pines that define the landscape. You can feel it underfoot when you walk through the woods, a soft give beneath the needles, a constant reminder of the earth's patient work. This land, rich in timber and later, oil and gas, has shaped the people of Carthage. The early settlers, drawn by the promise of fertile land and abundant forests, carved out a life from the wilderness. The discovery of the Panola County Oil Field in the 1930s transformed the town, bringing a boom that echoed through the decades. Even today, the rhythm of life is tied to the land – to the pine forests that whisper in the wind, and the resources that lie beneath the surface. It's a place where the past and present intertwine, where the echoes of those who came before are felt in every gentle slope and towering pine.

Neal, Margie

1875

(1875-1971) A native of Panola County, Margie Elizabeth Neal began her career as a teacher in 1893. She became editor and owner of the East Texas Register newspaper in 1904. A respected educator and leader in the woman suffrage movement, she was the first woman appointed to the State Normal School Board of Regents in 1921. Five years later she made history as the first woman elected to the Texas Senate. After serving in several Federal positions in Washington, she returned to Carthage in 1945 and was active in civic affairs for many years.

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Neal, Margie Elizabeth

1926

Mary "Margie" Elizabeth Neal, first woman in the Texas Senate, was born near Clayton, Texas, on April 20, 1875. She was the second of four children of William Lafayette and Martha (Gholston) Neal. She lived in Carthage for most of her life. She attended but did not graduate from Sam Houston State Teachers College (now Sam Houston State University). After a short teaching career in Panola County and in Fort Worth she returned in 1903 to Carthage, where her father bought the Texas Mule , a weekly newspaper. She became editor and publisher of the paper, which she renamed the East Texas Register, for eight years. In 1912 she sold the paper and took up caring for her mother full time. Neal became involved in the woman suffrage movement and served as the secretary of the Panola County Equal Suffrage Association and as the Eighth Senatorial District chairman for the Texas Equal Suffrage Association 's campaigns. She is thought to be the first woman to register to vote in Panola County in 1918. That year she was also the first women member of the State Democratic Executive Committee. After the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment prevented all states from restricting voting rights based on sex, Neal served in the League of Women Voters and was the only woman on the State Executive Committee of the Democratic party in 1920. She also was a delegate, along with Minnie Fisher Cunningham , to the Democratic national convention in San Francisco that year. Neal was the first woman member of the board of regents of the State Teachers Colleges of Texas (State Normal Schools) on which she served from 1921 to 1927. During her tenure, the board selected the site and president of the Stephen F. Austin Normal College (later Stephen F. Austin State University) in Nacogdoches. Neal's work on the board motivated her to run for the Texas Senate where she thought she could be more effective in pursuing education reform in the state. She announced her candidacy in March 1926 for the second senatorial district on a platform for better rural schools; increased education spending; a gasoline tax to fund an improved highway system; aid to farmers, labor, and capital; and fewer, better laws with improved enforcement. She won four of the five counties in her district and lost only her opponent's home county of Shelby. She served four consecutive terms. Working for prison reform, Neal served on a legislative inspection party that visited several prison farms in February 1927. She was chairperson of the Committee on Privileges and Elections. In 1928 Neal introduced the bill that established the State Board of Education (later replaced by the Texas Education Agency ), sponsored a bill that introduced public school physical education classes, and actively supported a bill that made the study of the state and national constitutions mandatory. She was instrumental in the passage of legislation that appropriated $1.6 million, the largest amount of funding for rural education in Texas at the time, for each of the next two academic years. Neal worked for higher standards for teacher certification while serving on the Senate Committee on Education Affairs, on which she served as vice-chair in 1927 and chair from 1929 to 1933. She also pushed the legislature to adopt an official state song and organized committee hearings in all senatorial districts. As a result, the Texas legislature adopted "Texas, Our Texas" as state song in May 1929. In 1929 she became the first woman to serve as Senate president pro tem (ad interim, elected at close of session) in Texas. She filled that roll again in 1933. In 1930 Neal ran unopposed and was reelected to the Texas Senate. She spent much of her next term battling Governor Ross Sterling , who called a 1931 special session of the state legislature to allow the state commissioners for the General Land Office and the Railroad Commission to contract or lease out the bed of the Sabine River for oil exploration and drilling. Most of the

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Moorman, Charles Watt

1839

Watt Moorman, a leader in the Regulator-Moderator War , son of Charles Hancock and Sophia (Maghee) Moorman, was born in Huntsville, Alabama, around 1817. His parents settled in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, and Columbus, Mississippi, before being driven to Texas by the Panic of 1837. The Moormans, including Watt's three brothers and three sisters, settled in northwest Shelby County (later a part of Panola County). In 1839 Texas was in turmoil. Most of the new arrivals were from states steeped in traditional legal recourse and its protection, but an element in Texas was engaged in producing fraudulent land certificates, slave theft, and other unlawful activities. The oldest settlers were unwilling or unable to control these activities. The new decided if the law wouldn't, they would, and banded themselves together as "Regulators" (i.e., vigilantes) dedicated to driving the lawless from Shelby County. This group was organized by Charles W. Jackson . Jackson was murdered from ambush, in retaliation for burning the homes of those the Regulators considered the worst and for killing Joe Goodbread, an alleged land pirate. Jackson was warning the world about fraudulent headright certificates (land scrip) being issued by many counties. Goodbread warned Jackson, the result being Goodbread's death. The murder of Jackson joined the issue and began the bloodiest feud in Texas history. Moorman replaced Jackson as head Regulator, and Ed Merchent organized the opposition under the name Moderators. Moorman, a natural leader, claimed the loyalty of the best citizens. Some allege he was a forger from Columbus, Mississippi, who had to come to Texas, though no record of his supposed crimes exists in the official court records of Columbus, Mississippi. When he moved to Texas in 1839 he brought his whole family, a fact that suggests he was no fugitive. Moorman's Regulators captured the McFadden brothers, three of Jackson's killers, all Moderators. An irregular trial was held before most of the Shelbyville townspeople in October 1841. The accused confessed. Bill and Bailey McFadden were hanged, and a younger McFadden boy was released. Most of the county concurred that the victims not only killed Jackson but an innocent citizen in his company. Moorman was a hero, but not for long. The Regulators controlled Shelbyville, where he became a virtual dictator. Men were killed on both sides, mostly from ambush. Without any protection, citizens were terrified. James F. Cravens organized a group of "Reformers," which a few Moderators joined; but the worst were denied, including John M. Bradley. On July 24, 1844, a peace treaty was signed by Moorman and Cravens. Moorman married Helen Mar Daggett in early 1844, ignoring the objections of her family. Her brother, Eph. Daggett, a Regulator, described Moorman: Watt could shoot straighter than any man I ever saw. He was a good scholar, wrote poetry that was real funny, and he had a comical laugh. He would not confine himself to any kind of business, was the ideal of his father and mother, played billiards and ten pins, bruised fellows' heads with billiard cues, rode his friends' horses, spent their money and wore their clothes. He gave away his own clothes if had more than his share, had the most respectable men for his friends, and anything he wanted that they had was at his service. Moorman was usually armed with a Bowie knife and a pair of pistols. He carried a heavy stick to cane his minor enemies and, like Robin Hood, carried a hunting horn on his saddle. The peace treaty acknowledged that "John M. Bradley had seduced many of the respectable citizens with false allegations about the Regulators." Bradley was apparently not a party to the treaty; Moorman killed him at a revival in San Augustine. Bradley had threatened Moorman's life and evidently was involved in an ambush in which Moorman was shot in the hip. The feud immediately resumed, and eventually involved hundreds of men from Harrison County and other East Texas co

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Ritter, Woodward Maurice [Tex]

1905

Tex Ritter, country singer and movie star, son of James Everett and Elizabeth (Matthews) Ritter, was born Woodward Maurice Ritter on January 12, 1905, in Murvaul, Panola County. Ritter's signature as a student at the University of Texas shows that he spelled his first name Woodard (not Woodward), and a delayed birth certificate filed in Panola County in 1942 also shows the spelling Woodard; however, all printed sources use the spelling Woodward. He moved to Nederland in Jefferson County, to live with a sister, and graduated from South Park High School in nearby Beaumont. He attended the University of Texas from 1922 to 1927, spending one year in the law school there, 1925–26. As a student he was influenced by J. Frank Dobie , Oscar J. Fox , and John A. Lomax —who encouraged his study of authentic cowboy songs. Ritter, more interested in music, did not take a degree; for a time he was president of the Men's Glee Club at the university. He also attended Northwestern University for one year in 1929 before he began singing western and mountain songs on radio station KPRC in Houston in 1929. The following year he was with a musical troupe touring the South and the Midwest; by 1931 he was in New York and had joined the Theatre Guild. His role in Green Grow the Lilacs (predecessor to the musical Oklahoma ) drew attention to the young "cowboy," and he became the featured singer with the Madison Square Garden Rodeo in 1932. Further recognition led to his starring in one of the first western radio programs to be featured in New York, "The Lone Star Rangers." His early appeal to New Yorkers as the embodiment of a Texas cowboy, in spite of his roots in the rural southern music tradition, undoubtedly led to his first movie contract in 1936. Tex appeared in eighty-five movies, including seventy-eight Westerns, and was ranked among the top ten money-making stars in Hollywood for six years. Although his movies owed much to the genre begun by other singing cowboys such as Gene Autry , Ritter used traditional folk songs in his movies rather than the modern "western" ditties. Films such as Arizona Frontier (1940), The Utah Trail (1938), and Roll Wagons Roll (1939) earned him a reputation for ambitious plots and vigorous action not always found in low-budget Westerns. Tex Ritter's successful recordings, which began with "Rye Whiskey" in 1931, included over the years "High Noon" (1952), "Boll Weevil" (1945), "Wayward Wind," "Hillbilly Heaven," and "You Are My Sunshine" (1946). Ranch Party , a television series featuring Ritter, ran from 1959 to 1962. His version of “High Noon” from the highly-acclaimed movie High Noon won an Academy Award for Best Original Song in 1953. He was married to Dorothy Fay Southworth on June 14, 1941; they were the parents of two sons. His younger son, John, became well-known through his television shows, Three's Company and Hearts Afire . In 1964 Tex Ritter was elected to the Country Music Hall of Fame, only the fifth person to be so honored; he also served as president of the Country Music Association from 1963 to 1965 and joined the Grand Ole Opry in 1965. In 1970 he made an unsuccessful bid for the United States Senate seat from Tennessee. He died in Nashville, Tennessee, on January 2, 1974; funeral services were held in Nederland, Texas, near Port Neches, and he was buried at Oak Bluff Memorial Park in nearby Port Neches. In 1980 he was inducted into the Western Performers Hall of Fame at the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City. The Texas Ritter Museum opened on October 18, 1992, in Carthage, Texas, (in Panola County) and contained memorabilia from his career. In 1998 he was an inaugural inductee into the Texas Country Music Hall of Fame , also located in Carthage, and in 2003 both the Texas Ritter Museum and Texas Country Music Hall of Fame were housed together. Ritter has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. He is also honored in the Museum of the Gulf Coast’s Music Hall of Fame in Port A

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Reeves, Jim

1924

(August 30, 1924 - July 31, 1964) Born in Galloway, James Travis Reeves played professional baseball for the St. Louis Cardinals' minor league team until an injury forced him to abandon that career. He became a radio disc jockey and formed a country western band. Joining the Grand Ole Opry in 1955, he became a world famous singer. Known fondly as "Gentleman Jim," Reeves was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1967, three years after he died in a plane crash. (1996)

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Carthage Book Club

1907

IN 1907, TWELVE AREA WOMEN, INCLUDING TEXAS’ FIRST WOMAN SENATOR, MARGIE NEAL, ESTABLISHED THE CIRCULATING BOOK CLUB. FOCUSING ON CIVIC AND SOCIAL ISSUES IN ADDITION TO LITERACY, THE CLUB’S FIRST MAJOR PROJECT WAS TO RAISE FUNDS FOR CARTHAGE’S FIRST SIDEWALK, CONNECTING DOWNTOWN TO THE SANTA FE RAILWAY. IN 1922, MEMBERS ESTABLISHED A CLUBHOUSE AND LADIES’ RESTROOM, WHICH MET THE NEEDS OF RURAL WOMEN VISITING TOWN FOR TRADE AND BUSINESS. THE CLUB ALSO OPENED A PUBLIC LIBRARY, MAINTAINED A RED CROSS WORKROOM DURING WORLD WARS I AND II, AND LED BEAUTIFICATION PROJECTS, INCLUDING REVITALIZATION OF THE TOWN SQUARE. TODAY, THE CARTHAGE BOOK CLUB CONTINUES TO PROMOTE THE CIVIC, SOCIAL, AND LITERARY WELFARE OF THE COMMUNITY.

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Sports in Carthage

🏆 STATE CHAMPIONS Class 4A · Football · 2016–2025

Carthage Bulldogs — 4A Football State Champions — seven titles in a decade

Most recent: 49–21 over West Orange-Stark · 2025 Class 4A-DII final

Deep in the East Texas pines, Carthage is what a football town looks like when the standard never slips. The Bulldogs won seven state championships from 2016 to 2025 — 2016, 2017, 2019, 2020, 2022, 2024 and 2025 — moving between 4A's two divisions and beating whoever the bracket sent.

The wins ranged from statement to surgical: a 70–14 demolition of Gilmer in 2020, two finals against Waco La Vega (42–28 in 2019, 28–14 in 2024), and a 49–21 close-out over West Orange-Stark in 2025. Running back Keaontay Ingram carried the program's colors on to Texas and the NFL.

State titles
7 (2016–2025)
Most recent
2025, 49–21
Class
4A
Biggest final
70–14 (2020)
Key Players
  • Keaontay Ingram — Running back — Texas, then the NFL
The moment

The 2020 final wasn't close: Carthage 70, Gilmer 14 — a title game turned into a track meet.

Sources: Wikipedia · UIL State Championship Archives · SI High School (ScoreBook Live)

Everything Near Carthage

144 stories, landmarks & places within ~20 miles — the same local lore RoadyGoat plays as you drive through.

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