Birthplace of Boogie Woogie RoadyGoat

Marshall, Texas is the birthplace of Boogie Woogie music, a piano-driven style that became a precursor to Rock and Roll. The city celebrates this heritage with an annual Boogie Woogie Festival and the Boogie Woogie Museum. Local blues guitarist Wes Jeans is another Marshall musician worth knowing. The city also hosts the Texas Sounds International Country Music Awards, essentially the Olympics of country music, drawing artists from around the world to compete each year.

Stagecoach Road RoadyGoat

Outside Marshall, in deep East Texas, Stagecoach Road is the real eighteen-fifties stage line that ran cotton and passengers down to Shreveport — run by planter William Bradfield until the railroad killed it off in the late eighteen-sixties. Iron wheels and horse hooves wore the dirt road so deep it now sits as much as twelve feet below the surrounding forest, eight dark miles under a closed canopy of pine and oak. The history is documented on a state marker. The ghost stories are not: legend says outlaws were hung from the roadside trees, and drivers swear something heavy thuds onto the roof right where the hanging tree stood — and that small child-sized handprints turn up on the glass by morning.

6.8 mi away

Leigh, TX RoadyGoat

Leigh, Texas. It sits nestled in the Piney Woods of Marion County, not too far from Caddo Lake. It might seem like a quiet, unassuming place, but it’s actually sent ripples out into the world.

14.3 mi away

Johnson, Claudia Alta Taylor [Lady Bird]

1912

First Lady of the United States (1963-1969), daughter of Thomas Jefferson Taylor and Minnie (Pattillo) Taylor, Claudia Alta Taylor was born in Karnack, Texas, on December 22, 1912. Mrs. Johnson's father was a landowner and merchant in Harrison County and a self-proclaimed "dealer in everything." Minnie Pattillo Taylor died from complications in a miscarriage when Claudia was five years old. A maternal aunt, Effie Pattillo, moved to Karnack to look after young Claudia and her two older brothers, Thomas, called Tommy (1901-1959) and Antonio, called Tony (1904-1986). During Claudia's early childhood, after her mother's death, a nursemaid, Alice Tittle, said that the little girl was "as purty [ sic ] as a lady bird." The nickname replaced her given name for the remainder of her life. Her father and brothers called her "Lady" and her husband called her "Bird," the name she used on her marriage license in 1934. Claudia made an attempt to escape the nickname when she changed schools to attend Marshall (Texas) High School. However, the arrival of former classmates brought her nickname with them and she was called Lady Bird for the rest of her life. She graduated from Marshall High School in 1928 and attended St. Mary's Episcopal School for Girls in Dallas, Texas, from 1928 to 1930. During her time at this residential junior college, she converted to the Episcopal faith. After graduating from St. Mary's School in 1930, Lady Bird attended a summer session at the University of Alabama (her mother's home state), but she decided to visit the University of Texas at Austin with a friend. On this visit, Lady Bird prophetically was awed at the sight of a field filled with wildflowers and the wildflowers clinched her college decision. Lady Bird Taylor received a Bachelor of Arts in history with honors in 1933 and a subsequent Bachelor of Journalism, cum laude in 1934. Her goal was a career in journalism, but she also earned a teaching certificate while she studied at the University of Texas at Austin. Lady Bird's career plans were changed forever when a mutual friend in Austin introduced her to Lyndon Baines Johnson , an aide to Congressman Richard Kleberg who represented the Fourteenth District. On their first date in October 1934 on a long drive in the country Lyndon Johnson proposed. Lady Bird initially resisted a rush to marriage, but Lyndon Johnson was prophetically persuasive, and the couple married on November 17, 1934, at St. Mark's Episcopal Church in San Antonio. Three years after their marriage, Lyndon Johnson decided to run for Congress from Austin's Tenth District and Lady Bird financed his campaign from her maternal inheritance. After his victory the Johnsons settled in Washington, D.C., and lived in suburban Virginia. Following the declaration of war in 1941 Congressman Johnson enlisted in the U.S. Navy, and Lady Bird ran the congressional office in his absence. Following the war the Johnsons experienced several miscarriages before the birth of two daughters-both born in Virginia-Lynda Johnson Robb (March 19, 1944) and Luci Johnson Turpin (July 2, 1947). In 1943 during World War II Lady Bird purchased radio station KTBC in Austin with money from her maternal inheritance and ultimately built this investment into the LBJ Holding Company (radio and television stations) that provided the major component of the family fortune. At the same time Lyndon Johnson's political career was ascendant: election to the United States Senate in 1948, reelection to the Senate in 1956, and rising to Vice President of the United States in 1960 as John F. Kennedy's running mate. At Kennedy's request Lady Bird Johnson substituted for the pregnant Jacqueline Kennedy and appeared at 150 events in 11 states during a 71-day period in the campaign. During a political fence-mending trip to Texas, Vice President Lyndon Johnson and Lady Bird Johnson were with President John F. Kennedy and First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy in Dallas when Kennedy was assassinated on

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Ledbetter, Huddie [Lead Belly]

1918

Huddie Ledbetter, singer and guitarist, known as Lead Belly (also spelled Leadbelly), was born on January 21, 1888, near Mooringsport, Louisiana. He was the son of a Black tenant farmer, Wesley Ledbetter, and his half Indian wife, Sally (or Sallie) Pugho. Ledbetter attended public schools in Louisiana, then in East Texas after his family purchased a small farm when he was ten. The family was listed in the 1900 census for Harrison County. Having learned to play the six-string guitar, he left home in 1901 to make his way as a minstrel, first on Fannin Street in Shreveport, and later in Dallas and Fort Worth. He spent summers working as a farmhand in the blackland counties east of Dallas and supplemented his income by singing and playing his guitar in saloons and dance halls during the winter. While working in Dallas, he met Blind Lemon Jefferson , and it was as his partner that Ledbetter first began to play the twelve-string guitar. In 1918, under the name of Walter Boyd, Ledbetter was convicted of murder and sentenced to thirty years in the Texas penitentiary. Either prior to his sentence or during it, the musician received his famous nickname, Lead Belly. Some reports say that he got it for taking a gunshot in the stomach; others suggest that fellow inmates gave it to him for his hard work and fast pace on the chain gangs. In any case, it sounds like his surname. Pardoned in 1925 after having written a song in honor of Governor Pat Neff , Lead Belly again lived from odd jobs until 1930, when he entered the state prison in Angola, Louisiana, on a charge of assault with intent to murder. There his music attracted Texas folklorist John Avery Lomax and his son Alan Lomax . Lead Belly was released from prison for having received credit for "good time" during his incarceration, and for several months he toured with the Lomaxes, giving concerts and assisting them in their efforts to record the work songs and spirituals of Black convicts. Soon after arriving in New York City with the Lomaxes, Lead Belly came to national prominence through his singing and unconventional background. Despite his growing musical reputation, he continued to have problems controlling his temper and found himself briefly incarcerated for assault in 1939 on Riker's Island. Ironically, his popularity was stronger in the White folk-music scene than the Black blues field. His associates included Woody Guthrie , Pete Seeger, and Sonny Terry. His original songs such as "Bourgeois Blues" and "Scottsboro Boys" reflected his politics. Lead Belly's most popular composition, "Goodnight Irene," achieved its greatest success when the Weavers recorded it in the early 1950s, after his death. Ledbetter's association in 1905 with Margaret Coleman produced two children. In 1916 he married Eletha Henderson; the two were later divorced. He married Martha Promise, from Louisiana, in 1935. Ledbetter died of Lou Gehrig's disease in New York City on December 6, 1949. He was buried at Shiloh Baptist Church, north of Shreveport, Louisiana. In 1988 Louisiana erected a historical marker at his gravesite. In 1980 the Nashville Songwriters Association International inducted him into their Hall of Fame. That honor was followed in 1986 with membership in the Blues Foundation Hall of Fame, and in 1988 Lead Belly's work was honored by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. His niece, Queen "Tiny" Robinson, established the Lead Belly Foundation in his honor. He was inducted into the Louisiana Music Hall of Fame in 2008.

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Wiley College

1873

Wiley College, established in 1873 in Marshall, Texas, by the Freedmen's Aid Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church, is the oldest African-American institute of higher education west of the Mississippi River. The college was originally located south of Marshall where the Wiley College Cemetery remains, but moved to a seventy-acre plot in downtown Marshall in 1880. It was chartered in 1882 and at the time served as a high school as well as a college. In 1888 Henry B. Pemberton was awarded a B.A. degree as the first college graduate. The first president was F.C. Moore, and for the institution's first twenty years the president and all the faculty and staff, who were considered missionaries, were White. The all-White policy changed in 1893 when Isaiah B. Scott was named the institution's first African-American president. In 1896 he became editor of the Southwest Christian Advocate , and Matthew Dogan took his place. He served forty-six years and finally retired in 1942. A fire in 1906 destroyed five of the eleven buildings on campus, but they were rebuilt and the president's home was constructed by 1907 when Dogan managed to secure funds from the Carnegie Foundation with no matching grant as was normally required for a library. It and the president's home were built by students. Always open to the entire community, the Carnegie was the only public library in Marshall until 1974. Great changes were made in 1929. The high school and all industrial classes were dropped, and in 1933 Wiley became the first historically-Black college in Texas to receive an "A" rating from the Southern Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools, although the all-White SACS made it clear that Wiley should not consider itself a member. Under the leadership of English professor, poet, playwright, and debate coach Melvin B. Tolson , Wiley College's debate team became legendary. It won virtually every debate among historically-Black colleges and became the first to debate a White college when it took on and defeated Oklahoma City College in 1932. The team's crowning achievement came in 1935 when it defeated that year's national champions, the University of Southern California. The saga was the subject of a motion picture, The Great Debaters (2007) directed by Denzel Washington who also played the role of Tolson. The film had a tremendous effect on Wiley, essentially doubling the enrollment and re-establishing an award-winning debate team-the result of a $1 million donation by Washington. Wiley had numerous well-known faculty members, in addition to Tolson. These included H. B. Pemberton, mathematics; J ames Leonard Farmer, Sr. , religion; Lucille Dogan Teycer, music; and Oliver Cromwell Cox and Andrew Polk Watson, sociology. Under the leadership of coach Fred "Pop" Long, Wiley College football and basketball teams were many times champions in the Southwestern Athletic Conference (SWAC), which was founded in part by Long in the 1920s. He organized the State Fair Classic football game in the Cotton Bowl during "Negro Day" at the Texas State Fair in 1925. From 1925 to 1929 Wiley played Oklahoma's Langston University in the State Fair Classic, and from 1930 to 1948 the opponent was Prairie View A&M University. Among Wiley's outstanding alumni were civil rights leaders Lawrence A. Nixon , James L. Farmer Jr. , Heman Sweatt , and Fred Lewis . Leaders in the field of education included Hobart Jarrett and Henrietta Bell Wells . Three Wiley graduates-Thomas Winston Cole, Sr.; Robert E. Hayes, Sr.; and Julius Scott, Jr.-became Wiley College presidents, and Mack Hopkins was a Tuskegee Airman. H. B. Pemberton's son Charles Pemberton was one of Houston's outstanding physicians. Wiley and Bishop College students participated in the largest sit-in in Texas in March and April of 1960. Although it only lasted four days, the publicity was great enough to cause the Texas State Senate Permanent Investigating Committee to send a representative to Marshall to look for Commu

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First Baptist Church

1845

John Bryce (1784-1864), Baptist missionary and secret agent for U. S. President John Tyler during Texas annexation negotiations, and the Rev. George Washington Baines, great-grandfather of President Lyndon Baines Johnson, founded this church shortly before Texas became a state in 1845. Dr. William Evans, Marshall's first physician, and other leaders of the pioneer community were among the twelve charter members. Throughout its history, this fellowship has included men and women who were leaders in the city, state, and Baptist faith. Services were held in a brush arbor or nearby log schoolhouse until 1849, when a church building was erected on this lot, donated by State Legislator James McCown (1808-55). The small frame structure was replaced by a larger building in 1892. Members of this congregation organized the Second Baptist Church in 1904. They also helped establish the College of Marshall in 1912. This junior college later became East Texas Baptist College, a four-year school which is still actively supported by this church. The present sanctuary was constructed in 1953, and the children's building was completed in 1955. A new education building and chapel were erected in 1972, completing the church complex.

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Pickens, Lucy H.

1850

(1832-1899) Only 19th century Texas woman honored by a portrait on money-- the Confederate $100 bill. In 1850s Lucy introduced ice tea and silk hose to East Texas, in social affairs at Wyalucing-- her family's home which stood at this site and was a center for social and cultural life in a wide area of plantations. Her husband was the Civil War Governor of South Carolina; her 2 brothers were Texas soldiers. Wyalucing (razed 1962) became 1863-65 headquarters for the Confederate Post Office Department in the area west of the Mississippi River. Supplemental Plate, 1989: This historical marker was relocated in 1990 from the site of Wyalucing (0.4 mi. West on Burleson Street) to the First Presbyterian Church. The Holcombe family was closely associated with the church, which was organized at Wyalucing on May 30, 1850. Lucy Pickens' father, B. L. Holcombe, was the congregation's first ruling elder. Lucy Holcombe was received into the membership of the church in 1853. (1965) Supplemental plate: This historical marker was relocated in 1990 from the site of Wyalucing (0.4 mi. West on Burleson Street) to the First Presbyterian Church. The Holcombe family was closely associated with the church, which was organized at Wyalucing on May 30, 1850. Lucy Pickens' father, B. L. Holcombe, was the congregation's first ruling elder. Lucy Holcombe was received into the membership of the church in 1853.

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Marshall, C.S.A.

1861

As a center of activity for the Confederacy west of the Mississippi, this East Texas town played a major role in the Civil War. Headquarters of the Trans-Mississippi Department Medical Bureau and Postal Service were here plus two military hospitals and a commissary bureau. An ordnance bureau, depot, arsenal, and laboratory produced and distributed powder, pistols, saddles, harness and clothing. Following the occupation of Missouri by Union forces, the governor and other officials of that state made this the wartime Confederate capitol of Missouri from November, 1863 to June, 1865. Three wartime conferences of governors and Confederate military officials of Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana and Missouri met here. One in 1862, resulted in the establishment of a separate department for these states. In 1863 military and civil authority was consolidated under Gen. E. Kirby Smith, commander of the department. On May 15, 1865, one month after Appomattox, discussion of continued resistance or surrender resulted in a stalemate. Prominent Confederates from Marshall were Edward Clark and Pendleton Murrah, wartime governors of Texas; Louis T. Wigfall, a "state's rights" leader in the U. S. Senate prior to secession and member of Confederate Senate; Dr. James Harper Starr, Trans-Mississippi postal agent; and Brigadier-Generals Matthew D. Ector, Elkanah Greer, Walter P. Lane and Horace Randal. This was the home of Lucy Holcomb Pickens, "Sweetheart of the Confederacy," the only woman whose portrait graced Confederate currency. Rather than surrender at War's end, a number of high-ranking Confederate military and civil officials began an exodus from Marshall to Mexico. A Memorial To Texans Who Served The Confederacy

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Marshall, Texas

Music in Marshall

Songs About Marshall

Artists From Marshall

Rivers & Roads in Song near Marshall

History of Marshall

Birthplace of Boogie Woogie RoadyGoat

Stagecoach Road RoadyGoat

Leigh, TX RoadyGoat

Johnson, Claudia Alta Taylor [Lady Bird]

Ledbetter, Huddie [Lead Belly]

Wiley College

First Baptist Church

Pickens, Lucy H.

Marshall, C.S.A.

Things to Do in Marshall

Everything Near Marshall