The Wall Under Rockwall RoadyGoat

You're in Rockwall, Texas, so here's the rocks and walls tangent behind the name: settlers digging in the eighteen fifties encountered a buried formation resembling a stone wall and named the town for it. Scientific study identifies it as natural geology, while stories of a prehistoric constructed wall persist. Sedimentary rock can fracture along bedding planes and joints into surprisingly rectangular blocks. Mineral cement, weathering, and erosion may sharpen the wall-like pattern. Nature often produces geometry that looks intentional; resemblance is not evidence of unknown builders. The entertaining mystery survives, but the factual default is a natural formation exposed by digging and erosion.

The Mystery of the Rock Wall RoadyGoat

The biggest story in Rockwall is the one buried right under your feet. Since 1851, people have been debating the origin of the town’s namesake rock wall. Is it a natural geological feature, or is it a man-made wall from a lost civilization? Over the years, sections of the wall have been excavated, studied, and argued over. Early accounts described what looked like arches, windows, and even strange script. Photos from a 1930s excavation show a remarkably uniform structure. Geologists are confident it’s a natural formation called a clastic dike. But local belief, passed down through generations, often holds onto the more romantic and mysterious possibility. The official scientific explanation is there, but the legend is what gives Rockwall its unique and enduring identity.

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Natural Sandstone or an Ancient Buried City? RoadyGoat

Almost from the day it was uncovered, the rock wall split people into two camps, and it still does. The mainstream scientific verdict has been steady and consistent: it is a natural formation. Texas geologist Robert T. Hill studied it in 1901 and called the structures clastic sand dikes; Sidney Paige wrote in Science in 1909 that the so-called wall was really a set of disconnected sandstone dikes trending in many directions, not a ring around the town. The Smithsonian's L. W. Stephenson and J. W. Fewkes pronounced it natural in 1927, and geophysicist Brooks Ellwood reached the same conclusion in 1988. Against all that sits a stubborn fringe tradition that it was built by a vanished prehistoric race. Count Byron de Prorok declared it man-made in 1925, and as recently as 1996 an architect named John Lindsey argued the evidence for a human-built structure was mounting. The pros and cons make for great roadside debate, but the geology is settled: nature stacked these stones, not lost engineers. (Source: Rockwall County Historical Foundation Museum.)

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Rockwall - The Buried Wall

1851

The town and county of Rockwall are named for a long, jointed sandstone formation running underground for miles beneath the area. Settlers digging a well in 1851 struck the wall and assumed it was man-made; geologists later identified it as a natural sandstone dike, but the question has never been fully settled in local lore.

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Griffith, John Summerfield

1861

John Summerfield Griffith, businessman, Confederate officer, and state legislator, was born to Michael B. and Lydia (Crabb) Griffith on June 17, 1829, in Montgomery County, Maryland. He had two brothers and three sisters. His grandfather, Capt. Samuel Griffith, took part in the battles of Germantown and Brandywine in the American Revolution. In 1839 Griffith settled with his family in San Augustine, Texas, where he was educated at home. He entered business as a clerk in a San Augustine mercantile establishment in 1850 and, using borrowed capital, established his own store the next year. In 1859 he moved to Kaufman County, where, in addition to operating a general store in Rockwall, he established himself in ranching and became one of the area's pioneer cotton farmers. With the onset of the Civil War , Griffith joined the Confederate Army as captain of a company of cavalry volunteers that he had organized in Rockwall. When the Sixth Texas Cavalry was established and his company was accepted into the regiment, Griffith was elected lieutenant colonel. He saw action against "Union Indians" at Chustenahalah in eastern Indian Territory (1861) and against Union forces at Elk Horn Tavern, Arkansas (1862), Corinth, Hatchie (Davis) Bridge, and Holly Springs, Mississippi (1862). Griffith was largely responsible for the planning and execution of the successful Holly Springs Union Depot Raid that with General Forrest’s raid in northwest Tennessee caused Ulysses S. Grant to cancel his overland campaign to rebuild his supplies and thus contributed to the temporary relief of Vicksburg and possibly lengthened the war. The campaign ruined his already weak health, however, and forced him to resign his commission. After returning to Texas, he won election to the House of Representatives of the Tenth Texas Legislature (1863–64). As the Democratic representative of District 27 (Kaufman, Henderson, and Van Zandt counties), he chaired the Committee on Military Affairs and was appointed by Governor Pendleton Murrah as brigadier general of state troops for District 2 on March 1, 1864, a position that he held until the end of the war. In 1873 he moved to Terrell, where he continued in the mercantile and livestock businesses. Additionally, he largely recouped his wartime financial losses by selling bois d'arc seeds to buyers in the North, who used the trees as windbreaks and hedges. Griffith was little involved in politics during the period of Reconstruction . In 1876, however, he was elected to represent the twenty-second legislative district (Kaufman, Rains, Van Zandt, and Wood counties) in the Fifteenth Texas Legislature (1876). He was appointed chairman of the House Committee on Public Printing, in which position he proved to be a "watchdog" of the state treasury. Griffith married Emily Simpson on December 18, 1856, and the couple raised two boys and one girl. He accumulated small fortunes both before and after the Civil War, a success reflected in public respect. In 1883 he became a member of a committee chosen by the people of Terrell to get a state psychiatric hospital located in the town. He was appointed to the board of governors when the facility opened in 1885 and retained this position until Governor James Hogg appointed a new board in 1890. Griffith died in Terrell on August 6, 1901.

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Morris, John Walter

1902

John Walter Morris, baseball player, promoter, and executive, was born on January 30, 1880, at Rockwall, Texas. He left the University of Texas in 1902 to play with Corsicana of the Texas League , a league in which he spent the next twenty-six years as player, manager, club executive, and, for five years, league president. He was one of the earliest collegians to leap directly into organized baseball. Headlines and records seemed to follow Morris. In his first season at Corsicana his club had baseball's highest winning percentage (.793), set a world record for consecutive victories (twenty-seven), never relieved a pitcher all season, and figured in the game's greatest slaughter-a 51-3 victory over Texarkana. All this was done with an eleven-man squad. While a student at the University of Texas, where he frequently played without shoes, Morris had been known as the "Barefoot Boy at Texas." He received a law degree from the University of Texas in 1906 and tried to combine law and baseball careers until 1910, when he decided that baseball was his life's work. In 1916 he became president of the Texas League and helped to arrange the Dixie Series, a thirty-seven-year match between the Texas League and the Southern Association champions. For several years he owned half interest in the Fort Worth Cats, and again, after 1922, he was part owner and secretary-business manager for six years of the Dallas baseball team. He also served as business manager for the Shreveport, Tyler, and Fort Worth teams. He held the following personal records: club manager in his third year of organized baseball; organizer of more leagues (fourteen) and president of more (seven) than any other man on record; at one time president of three leagues concurrently-the East Texas, Evangeline, and Cotton States; builder of nine baseball parks; developer of numerous baseball players for the major leagues, including Rogers Hornsby ; and once, in an emergency, Texas League president and umpire simultaneously. He died on August 2, 1961, of a heart attack following a surgical operation. In December 1966 he was elected to the Texas Sports Hall of Fame .

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Payne, Glen Weldon

1926

Glen Weldon Payne, lead singer in Southern Gospel music , was born on October 20, 1926, near Rockwall, Texas, to cotton farmers Elmer and Vela Payne. The Paynes farmed in Munson and later Nevada, Texas. As a boy during the Great Depression , Payne’s passion was Southern Gospel music. While hoeing cotton he learned to tell time from the sun so that he could get home in time to hear the noon broadcast of the Stamps-Baxter Quartet on KRLD . The Paynes, who were Methodists, attended an interdenominational church in Munson, the only church in town. Friday and Saturday night “singin’s” were Payne’s favorite events. Southern Gospel music grew out of shape-note music created to teach musical harmony to rural churchgoers. Shape-note music publishers promoted their music books with radio broadcasts, itinerating quartets, singing conventions, and annual summer “singing schools.” Male quartets—consisting of a lead singing melody, a baritone singing harmony, and a low bass part balanced by a high tenor—dominated early Southern Gospel music. The music is positive and lively, stressing Christian themes, especially deliverance from trials of life and the joy of going home to heaven. The Stamps-Baxter Music Company of Dallas was the largest publisher of shape-note music in the South. When Payne was twelve, his grandmother wrote a letter to the company on Payne’s behalf. V. O. Stamps gave him a scholarship to attend the three-week-long Stamps Singing School in Oak Cliff, Texas. Payne, along with his father and two family friends, formed the Munson Quartet and sang “at singing conventions in small towns like Terrell, Wills Point and Royse City.” Payne attended the summer singing schools for four summers beginning in 1939 throughout high school. In 1944 the Stamps-Baxter Music Company hired Payne to sing weekday mornings with the Stamps-Baxter Quartet on KRLD, and he moved to Dallas. World War II imposed a break in Payne’s singing career. In 1945 and 1946 he was in the United States Army and served with the Eighty-sixth Blackhawk Division in the Philippines after which he went to work for the Stamps Quartet Music Company and sang baritone for the Harley Lester Stamps Quartet and Stamps All-Star Quartet. He also taught at Stamps in addition to singing. By the early 1950s he assumed the lead part in the Stamps-Ozark Quartet in Wichita Falls, Texas, and sang “every night” at schools, churches, lodges, on the courthouse lawn, or even in a cotton field. Empowered by technological advances in recording, radio , and television, Southern Gospel music achieved the height of its popularity in the post-war years. Payne recalled that “the newly invented tape format” allowed the group to pre-record their morning KWFT broadcasts and perform farther from home. They enjoyed success and even opened for acts such as Eddy Arnold and Elvis Presley . But when drought hit the Panhandle in 1956, opportunities for performances dried up, KWFT dropped the daily show, and the Stamps-Ozark Quartet disbanded. While Payne pondered what to do next, in 1957 Earl Weatherford invited him to join the Weatherfords who were singing in Rex Humbard’s mega-church in Akron, Ohio. Thousands attended Humbard’s church, the Cathedral of Tomorrow, and tens of thousands more watched on television. While living in Ohio, Payne met and married Van Lua Harris on November 30, 1957. They had two daughters and a son. In 1959 the Weatherfords recorded the album In the Garden , highly renowned as one of the outstanding albums in all of gospel music. In 1963 Weatherford left Humbard’s church to go on tour, and Payne formed the Cathedral Trio with former Weatherford members Danny Koker and Bobby Clark. The trio became the Cathedral Quartet with the addition of bass George Younce. For the next thirty-five years Payne and Younce were the core of the Cathedrals, while younger tenor and baritone members came and went. The Cathedrals left the Humbard organization in 1969 and struck out on their own. The 1970

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The Church of Christ in Rockwall

1836

Before establishing an independent republic in 1836, Texas settlers were expected to support the Mexican state religion. As Mexico's rule waned, residents and new arrivals to Texas organized non-Catholic churches. Among them was "the church on horseback and wheels." a group of approximately 300 members traveling from Tennessee to Texas. Led by noted preacher and physician Mansil (Mansell) W. Matthews, the members were part of what became known as the American Restoration Movement, which launched the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) and the Church of Christ. Matthews' traveling church crossed into Texas at the Jonesborough crossing of the Red River on January 17, 1836 and became what is believed to be the first Church of Christ congregation in Texas. Matthews and his family moved to Rockwall in 1853. They only stayed a few years but during that time helped establish a local Church of Christ. Beginning with the strong leadership of Matthews in 1853, Rockwall's Church of Christ congregation grew during the next century. Members built their first meeting place in 1880. In 1895, a disagreement began over the use of instrumental music in worship, and the congregation split. The progressive faction became part of the Disciples of Christ and the conservative group formed a new Church of Christ congregation. Their first meetinghouse was completed in 1910. A later rift led to the formation of Lakeside Church of Christ, but the two groups later reunited in name, number and purpose. Known today as Eastridge Church of Christ, the congregation maintains the traditions of Texas' early religious pioneers through service, worship and study. (2005)

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Rockwall County

1840

First settled in the 1840s, this region was a part of Kaufman County until 1873, when Rockwall County was created. With an area of 147 square miles, this is the smallest of Texas' 254 counties. The county and city of Rockwall were named for an underground formation of rock discovered in the early 1850s. Crossed by the Missouri, Kansas & Texas Railroad, Rockwall County is an area of fertile farmland. The location here of the aluminum industry and the creation of Lake Ray Hubbard from the East Fork of the Trinity River diversified the local economy in recent years. (1976)

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Rockwall, Texas

Music in Rockwall

Songs About Rockwall

Artists From Rockwall

Rivers & Roads in Song near Rockwall

History of Rockwall

The Wall Under Rockwall RoadyGoat

The Mystery of the Rock Wall RoadyGoat

Natural Sandstone or an Ancient Buried City? RoadyGoat

Rockwall - The Buried Wall

Griffith, John Summerfield

Morris, John Walter

Payne, Glen Weldon

The Church of Christ in Rockwall

Rockwall County

Things to Do in Rockwall

Everything Near Rockwall