Hearne, Texas

Everything Hearne is known for

1 song mention this city 1 artist from here

Music in Hearne

Songs About Hearne

Still Bangin’ Screw
Kyle Lee
3%
"Still dranked out in this bitch / Still screwed up in this bitch"

Artists From Hearne

C
Chalie Boy
hip-hop

Rivers & Roads in Song near Hearne

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

Brazos River 42 songs Kickapoo Creek 4 songs Interstate 45 8 songs

History of Hearne

She Turned Down the Deal and It Cost Her Everything but the Truth RoadyGoat

2000

There is a movie about what happened in this town. It is called American Violet, it came out in 2009 with Alfre Woodard and Nicole Beharie in it, and it renames Hearne as a fictional town called Melody. Everything else in it is close to the record. On the morning of November second, 2000, officers walked into the place where a young mother named Regina Kelly was waiting tables over in College Station, put handcuffs on her, and would not tell her why. She was one of twenty-eight people rounded up in Hearne that day in a drug sweep run by a regional narcotics task force. The judge set her bond at seventy thousand dollars. Her court-appointed lawyer told her to plead guilty and take the probation. And this is the decision the whole story turns on, because taking that deal was the easy road. Plead, go home, sleep in your own bed. But a plea meant a felony record, and a felony record meant losing her housing, and it meant saying she had done something she had not done. She refused. She kept refusing while other people around her pleaded out just to get free of the jail. The district attorney's office went into family court to try to take her children, and nobody was there to represent her in that room. It ended up being the right call, but it took years, and it cost her. She moved to Houston to get away from the pressure and came back to visit her own family quietly. That is the actual story behind the movie. Not a heroic speech. A broke young mother sitting in a county jail, being told over and over to sign, and not signing.

RoadyGoat →

Hearne, TX RoadyGoat

In November 2000, 15 African-American residents of Hearne were indicted on drug charges after being arrested in a series of 'drug sweeps'. The ACLU filed a class-action lawsuit, Kelly v. Paschall, on their behalf, alleging that the arrests were unlawful. The ACLU contended that 15% of Hearne's male African-American population aged 18 to 34 (and at least one woman) were arrested based on the 'uncorroborated word of a single unreliable confidential informant coerced by police to make cases.' In May 2005, the ACLU and Robertson County announced a confidential settlement of the lawsuit, an outcome with which 'both sides stated that they were satisfied.' District Attorney John Paschall dismissed the charges against the plaintiffs of the suit. He also admitted that the witness had tampered with evidence and failed a polygraph test. A movie, American Violet, was made about the incident.

RoadyGoat →

The Cadillac Coming Down the Pin Oak Road RoadyGoat

1899

Between Hearne and Wheelock there used to be a settlement called Pin Oak, and in 1899 a girl named Rosie Lee Moore was born there, the oldest daughter in a family of fourteen children. She married young and stayed local, and then at some point she went to work for the Quaker Oats Company, and that is where the ordinary part of the story ends. When the company needed someone new to appear in public as Aunt Jemima, they picked her. From 1950 until she died she was the traveling face of the biggest breakfast brand in the country, going city to city cooking pancakes at fairs and expositions and store openings, and she is generally described as the last woman Quaker sent out to do it. Understand that this was a job. It paid, it came with a Cadillac, and her relatives would stand out on the porch and watch that car come down the dirt road with the dust boiling up behind it. Not everybody in the family was proud of the work she had taken. Her youngest sister thought she had stepped down in the world. Neighbors mostly remembered her as a sweet woman who was good with their kids. She came home for Christmas in 1966, and in February she had a heart attack on the way to church and died at sixty-seven. She is buried a few miles out of town, in the Black Jack community. And one clarification worth making, because Texas has more than one claim here. The other Texas Aunt Jemima, Lillian Richard, is tied to Hawkins over in East Texas. This one, the one at the end of the line, is ours.

RoadyGoat →

Colored Graveyard in the Old Town of Hearne

1879

This cemetery, now represented by a single grave, was a burial site for African Americans residents of the area. According to folklore, it originated as a farm or slave cemetery. The earliest known burial here dated in 1879, and residents used the graveyard until 1912. In 1947, developers purchased this property; descendants of the interred were forced to move and rebury relatives. However, the children of Hollie Tatnell (d. 1911), a former slave, refused to reinter their mother, forcing developers to build around her grave. Today, this single grave serves as a reminder of the area’s early African-American community and of the sanctity of burial grounds. Historic Texas Cemetery - 2007

Historical Marker →

Nashville

1835

Surveyed in the fall of 1835 as the capital of Robertson's colony. Named for Nashville, Tennessee where Sterling C. Robertson and many of his colonists had formerly lived. Seat of justice Milam municipality, 1836; Milam County, 1837. First home in Texas of George C. Childress, chairman of the committee who drafted the Texas Declaration of Independence.

Historical Marker → · 5.0 mi away

Adams-White Place

1896

Built 1896 by Horatio ("Rashe") Adams, noted citizen and public relations man in Washington, D. C. The contractor was A. A. White. After 1911, the house was called the "Dr. John W. Black Place," for its owner. It was later sold to Mrs. Willie L. Moreland. In 1924, the house was purchased by Miss Lil White, present owner. Victorian in style, structure had a separate Kitchen (now the garage) once supplied with water from a backyard artesian well. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1968

Historical Marker →

Salter, Charles P.

1863

Charles P. Salter, planter, miller, Confederate officer, and state legislator, was born in Washington County, Georgia, on March 9, 1830. He was the son of Zadoc and Nancy (Gainer) Salter. His parents died when he was about fifteen, and when Salter was about eighteen years old, he moved to Pike County, Alabama. There he married Margaret Ann Talbot on October 3, 1850. This couple had four children, but three sons died in childhood. Salter immigrated to Texas by 1853 and settled a large farm and plantation near Sterling in Robertson County. By 1860 he was among the most prosperous citizens and prolific cotton producers of the community and claimed $43,750 in personal and real estate property on the 1860 census. His wife died in 1861. Some years later he married Bertha Lovett and they had two children, but one died in infancy. At the outbreak of the Civil War , Salter volunteered for service in the Confederate Army. Initially he served as a first lieutenant and saw combat. In 1863, however, the Confederate War Department ordered Salter transferred to quartermaster duty as a captain, charged with establishing a cotton and wool mill in Texas as an aid to the war effort. Accordingly, Salter traveled to Virginia to secure parts and machinery for the mill and returned to Texas later in 1863. After overseeing the construction of the mill at Hearne in Robertson County, Salter helped create a joint stock company which allowed leading cotton planters to sell a bale of cotton—duty-free—on the international market for every bale donated to the Confederacy. This plan eventually allowed several hundred bales to be sold, via Matamoros, Mexico, and supplied the Confederate treasury with more than $500,000 before the end of the war. Salter himself donated approximately 100 bales. Following the war Salter continued his leadership in community affairs. He served as alderman for the town of Calvert in Robertson County, and in 1868 he worked as the contractor to construct the Houston and Texas Central Railroad from Bryan to Calvert. In 1872 he won election as a Democratic representative for District 18—comprised of Freestone, Leon, and Robertson counties—to the House of the Thirteenth Texas Legislature. He served from January 14, 1873, to January 13, 1874, and was on the Commerce and Manufactures Committee, Indian Affairs Committee, and Committee to investigate State Asylums. Charles Salter was a Mason and member of the Knights of Honor. He died in Robertson County in 1899 and was buried there at Calvert Cemetery.

Tsha Handbook →

Townsend, William Parnell

1861

William Parnell Townsend, planter, businessman, and Confederate officer, was born in Mississippi, on August 7, 1822, to Thomas Townsend and Tabitha Parnell. He fought in the Mexican War before marrying Almira Jennings on March 27, 1856, in Lowndes County, Mississippi. This couple had two sons and three daughters. Townsend settled in Robertson County in 1852 and played a key role in establishing that county as a major source of cotton in Texas. By 1860 he had prospered considerably, increasing the number of slaves he owned over the decade from thirteen to twenty-nine and boasting $13,500 in real estate and $25,750 in personal property. In September 1860 Townsend joined Robertson County's leading citizens in passing a resolution calling for the secession of Texas from the Union in the event of the secession of another Southern state. In May 1861 he raised a company of infantry, called the "Robertson Five Shooters," for service in the Confederacy. This unit trained in Central Texas throughout the summer of 1861. In September of that year, it was sent by rail to Virginia where it was incorporated into the Fourth Texas Infantry Regiment as Company C, and Townsend was made its captain. With this unit, Townsend participated in actions at the battles of Gaines' Mill and Second Bull Run and received promotion to major. At Second Bull Run, he was wounded and lost his left foot. Following his injury, Townsend returned to Robertson County where he contributed to the Confederate war effort by establishing a cotton, wool, and flour factory, known as the Brazos Manufacturing Company, near Hearne. In addition to cash, Townsend pledged fifty bales of cotton. In 1869 Townsend was among several prominent Robertson County men who established the town of Sterling in hopes of taking advantage of the extension of a railroad beyond Hearne. His wife Almira died on November 25, 1873, during a yellow fever epidemic. Townsend died on October 24, 1882, and is buried next to his wife at the Calvert City Cemetery in Robertson County, Texas.

Tsha Handbook →

Things to Do in Hearne

historical 9.4 mi away
The Yellow Fever Train

On September 3 1873 a young man named W.F. Hughes stepped off a train from Shreveport and checked into a Calvert hotel. Two days later he fell ill. Within a…
historical 9.3 mi away
Reconstruction on the Brazos

During Reconstruction Calvert became a flashpoint for racial politics in Texas. African Americans supported by White Republican allies briefly exercised real…
historical 9.3 mi away
The Largest Cotton Gin in the World

In 1871 tiny Calvert Texas claimed to have the largest cotton gin on the entire planet. The town had exploded after the Houston and Texas Central Railway…
historical 9.4 mi away
When Calvert Was Fourth in Texas

It is hard to believe today but Calvert was once the fourth-largest city in Texas with 10000 residents. Cotton money railroad connections and a strategic…
quirky 9.8 mi away
A Victorian Museum That Nobody Planned

Calvert is now the fourth largest historic district in Texas and nobody planned it that way. When the cotton money dried up and the population drained away the…
historical 0.6 mi away
The Lone Grave

A single 1911 grave of formerly enslaved woman Hollie Tatnell sits in the median of Wheelock Street and is the last remnant of a Black cemetery whose other…
historical 9.3 mi away
The Jewish Merchants of Calvert

When the railroad reached Calvert in 1868 Jewish merchants were among the first to set up shop. The Sanger Brothers opened a store that very year and more…
quirky 9.3 mi away
The Laughing Ghost

Calverts historic district has more than Victorian architecture to offer. One downtown store is said to be haunted by the ghost of a woman who can be heard…

Everything Near Hearne

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

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