Name: Woodville, Texas
Address: Woodville, TX

Woodville, TX RoadyGoat

Woodville's a small town, but it's got stories. You might not expect a place nestled deep in the East Texas Piney Woods to have much connection to the wider world, but it does.

Woodville, TX RoadyGoat

Woodville is a place where the echoes of the past still resonate, even if you have to listen closely to hear them. Long before Alan Wood lent his name to the town in 1846, the Caddo people called this land home. While their physical presence faded with the arrival of European settlers, you can still feel their connection to the rolling East Texas terrain, the same land where dogwood trees bloom riotously each spring, celebrated now by the annual Dogwood Festival. Lumber was king here for a long time, drawing folks from all corners to try their luck. That industry shaped the town’s early boom, and then its bust during the Great Depression. You can see it in the architecture, the sturdy, no-nonsense homes built to last, homes that have stood through booms and droughts, homes that perhaps hold the secrets of that legendary Confederate gold said to be buried nearby.

Woodville, TX RoadyGoat

Woodville owes its existence to trees and politics, really. Before the sawmills, the Caddo people knew this land intimately. But when folks started arriving in the mid-1840s, they saw opportunity in all that timber. Then, in 1854, becoming the county seat of Tyler County sealed the deal. It meant the courthouse, the lawyers, the land records – the center of things. That designation, coupled with the lumber boom, is what set Woodville apart from other little spots in the Big Thicket. The Depression hit hard, of course, as it did everywhere reliant on a single industry like timber. These days, the Dogwood Festival brings a burst of color and life every spring. It’s a story everyone knows, a whisper of forgotten fortunes hidden somewhere in these woods. It might be just a legend, but it keeps the dream alive – the dream that something extraordinary might be waiting just beneath the surface of this unassuming East Texas town.

Work, Lt. Col. Philip A.

1838

Came to Texas, 1838, represented Tyler County, Texas secession convention, 1861. Raised and was Captain, Co. F. 1st Regt., Hood's Texas brigade. As Lieutenant Colonel, commanded Hood's Texans June 1862-Jan. 1864, in battles such as Sharpsburg, where brigade had over 82% casualties. Greatest loss for any unit in any Civil War action. Col. work led Texas brigade second day, Gettysburg; And in Chickamauga victory, 1863. After coming home to regain health, was in David S. Terry's Texas cavalry. After war practiced law. Is buried in old Hardin Cemetery.

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Shivers, Allan - Texas Statesman

1935

One of Texas' strongest governors, a progressive, colorful, dynamic leader. Administration (1949-1957) -- longest in state's history -- was marked by winning fight for restoration of the tidelands to Texas. In state Senate, 1935, where he was youngest man ever seated up to that time, he was author of Texas old-age pension and unemployment compensation laws. In 1947-1949 he served as lieutenant governor. As governor he made reforms in state hospitals, prisons, schools for deaf and exceptional children; created agencies for higher education, historical preservation, water resources, studies of alcoholism. In his administration highway mileage doubled. He had a moderate tax policy and a balanced budget. He was chairman, national and southern governors conferences, and Interstate Oil Compact Commission; president of the Council of State Governments. Born Oct. 5, 1907, in Lufkin, of pioneer east Texas family. Son of Robert A. and Easter Creasy Shivers. Attended Woodville schools; graduate of Port Arthur High School; University of Texas, B. A., 1931, LL.B., 1933. Married Marialice Shary, 1937. Has four children. Served in Europe in Work War II. Is a Baptist and a Mason; lawyer, rancher, farmer, investor, civic leader.

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Kirby, John Henry-and Education in Woodville

1860

John Henry Kirby, son of John T. and Sarah Payne Kirby, was born in the village of Peachtree in North Tyler County, Texas, in 1860. A promising young student, he was encouraged to move to Woodville where he could attend schools with a more challenging curriculum. Kirby married Lelia Stewart in 1883 and afterward joined the staff of Texas State Senator and Attorney Samuel Cooper. He gained admittance to the Texas Bar in 1885 and became Cooper's law partner. After helping Boston investors form the Texas and Louisiana Land and Timber Company he formed his own Kirby Lumber Company in 1901. The company evolved into a regional economic powerhouse responsible for the creation of numerous lumbermill towns in southeast Texas with more than 16,000 employees and covering more than a million acres of timberland. Kirby amassed a lumber empire and became known as the "Prince of the Pines." Though immensely wealthy and a figure of national and state prominence, Kirby never forgot his Tyler County roots. Kirby's many philanthropic acts and gifts to churches, schools, parks, and organizations in East Texas included his donation of land and the funds to build "Kirby High School" at this site in 1928. The last Kirby High School class graduated in 1979. Sesquicentennial of Texas Statehood 1845-1995

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Woods, Zadock

1828

Zadock Woods, one of Stephen F. Austin 's Old Three Hundred , was born Zaduck Wood on September 18, 1773, in Brookfield Township, Massachusetts, the son of Jonathan and Keziah (Keith) Wood. By 1796 he had moved to South Woodstock, Vermont, where he married Minerva Cottle in 1797. They had six children. Woods and his family moved to the St. Charles District of Missouri Territory around 1801 and were the first White settlers granted land in that area. The town of Woodville (or Woods' Fort) was established at Troy, Missouri, and Woods's inn and tavern was its first stagecoach stopover. Woods' Fort, commanded by Lt. Zachary Taylor , was a principal defense post during the War of 1812. Woods fought with Andrew Jackson in Alabama and New Orleans. After a lead-mining venture with Moses Austin ruined him financially, Woods and his family joined Stephen F. Austin's Texas colony in 1824. His original land grant was in Matagorda County, but the family settled farther up the Colorado River in Fayette County. His fortified home in the vicinity of present West Point was called Woods' Fort (or Woods' Prairie) and was used by the colonists as a place of refuge from Indian attacks from 1828 to 1842. Woods's son Leander was killed in the battle of Velasco in 1832. Zadock mustered under Capt. Michael Goheen and Col. John H. Moore to fight in the battle of Gonzales, the battle of Concepción, and the Grass Fight near San Antonio, all in 1835. He returned home on December 3 of that year but was again involved in the Texas Revolution the next spring, when he housed a ten-member company of Tennessee volunteers under Daniel William Cloud on February 10, 1836, on their way to the Alamo . The family took part in the Runaway Scrape , fleeing before the advancing Mexican army. Minerva Woods died on March 28, 1839, and was buried in the Woods' Prairie Cemetery. In 1842 Woods and his sons Norman and Henry G. were recruited by Capt. Nicholas M. Dawson to fight with Mathew Caldwell 's forces against Mexican general Adrián Woll at Salado Creek. On September 18, 1842, Woods was killed in the Dawson Massacre . His son Henry escaped, but Norman was captured and taken to Perote Prison . Zadock Woods was buried in a mass grave by Salado Creek but was reinterred six years later at the Kreische Brewery-Monument Hill State Historic Sites in La Grange. Historical markers in Troy, Missouri, and West Point, Texas, note Woods as a significant early pioneer.

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Work, Philip Alexander

1861

Philip Alexander Work, lawyer and Confederate soldier, was born in Cloverport, Breckinridge County, Kentucky, on February 17, 1832, the son of John and Frances (Alexander) Work. The family moved to Velasco, Texas, in 1838 and several years later settled in Town Bluff, Tyler County; John Work established a plantation a few miles below Town Bluff. After receiving a good education, Philip Work was admitted to the bar in Woodville in 1853. He enlisted and served with the rank of first sergeant for four months in Capt. John George Walker 's Company B, Mounted Battalion of Texas Volunteers, when Governor Elisha Marshall Pease in the fall of 1854 issued a call for volunteers to protect the Texas frontier from Indian depredations; the volunteers were then mustered into the regular United States Army, and Work later received a federal pension for this service. He was one of the two delegates from Tyler County to the Secession Convention in 1861, but before the convention reconvened on March 2 he resigned to raise a company of Texas militia, known locally as the Woodville Rifles. When it was mustered into the Confederate Army at New Orleans in May 1861 it became Company F of the First Texas Infantry Regiment, Hood's Texas Brigade . Upon reorganization of the regiment in May 1862 in Virginia, Work, who had already been promoted to major, was elected lieutenant colonel. He became the regimental commander on June 27 during the battle of Gaines' Mill, after Col. Alexis T. Rainey was wounded. Thereafter, Work commanded the First Texas Infantry in the battles of Malvern Hill, Freeman's Ford, Thoroughfare Gap, Second Manassas, Boonesboro Gap, Sharpsburg or Antietam, Fredericksburg, and Gettysburg. At Sharpsburg his regiment suffered 82.3 percent casualties, the greatest percentage of losses sustained by any regiment, Union or Confederate, in a single day of fighting during the war. His father, Dr. John Work, was assistant surgeon of the First Texas Infantry from October 1862 to July 1864. Philip Work succeeded to the command of Hood's Brigade on the third day of the battle of Gettysburg. He became ill on September 18, 1863, before the battle of Chickamauga, and had no further field service with his regiment; his resignation as lieutenant colonel of the First Texas Infantry on November 12, 1863, was accepted by the War Department in January 1864. He returned to Texas and, after recovering his health, raised and commanded a company in Col. David Smith Terry 's Texas Cavalry regiment from the fall of 1864 to the end of the war. Work resumed his law practice in Woodville, but in October 1865 he moved to New Orleans, where he practiced law and was in the steamboat business. After 1874 he resided in Hardin County, Texas, where he attained eminence as a land lawyer. He also was the owner of the steamboat Tom Parker, which navigated the Neches River. In his later years Work wrote several accounts of his wartime experiences, but only fragments of these manuscripts have been preserved. At Woodville on May 8, 1855, he was married to Adeline F. Lea, and they were the parents of four children. Work died on March 17, 1911, and was buried in the old Hardin Cemetery near Kountze.

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Peach Tree Village

1700

Peach Tree Village, near the Neches River on a site now crossed by Farm Road 2097 two miles north of the present Chester in Tyler County, was the largest and most prominent of the villages established by the Alabama Indians. It was on a hill in the Kisatchie Wold , the ridge running through northern Tyler County. Members of the Alabama and Coushatta Indians had begun entering Texas in the latter part of the eighteenth century, and the Spanish Indian agent Samuel Davenport reported that the Alabamas established their principal village on the west bank of the Neches River eight leagues above its confluence with the Angelina. The Alabama Trace and the Coushatta Trace passed through this village. Also, it was the northern terminal of Long King's Trace , and the important north-south trail, the Liberty-Nacogdoches Road , was five miles east. Surveyors' field notes for fifteen original land grants in the counties of Polk and Tyler refer to this village. The Alabamas' claim to lands in Peach Tree Village and vicinity was contested for the first time when, in 1834 Col. Peter Ellis Bean , an American serving in a Mexican army detachment stationed at Nacogdoches, applied for and received a grant of eleven leagues of land from the Mexican government. Colonel Bean, who promoted this grant through Gavino Aranjo, one of his subordinates in the Mexican army, located part of his grant on land occupied by the Alabamas at Peach Tree Village. This land was later conveyed to Frost Thorne and his successors. The Alabamas were on good terms with White settlers in the area, who included Peter Cauble and Valentine Ignatius Burch . Cauble settled at Peach Tree Village sometime around 1831, and Burch, who married Cauble's daughter, settled there about 1845. Peter Cauble's house was mentioned in the 1846 description of the boundaries of Polk County. At Gen. Sam Houston 's request, the Alabamas remained neutral during the Texas Revolution . But they fed and cared for White settlers who passed through Peach Tree Village in the Runaway Scrape . To show that they were neutral the Alabamas displayed a large piece of white cloth every time a group of fleeing Texas approached Peach Tree Village. After Texas gained independence from Mexico, increasing numbers of settlers located in and near Peach Tree Village, and this village began a gradual transition from an Indian community to a prosperous frontier town with a store, a cotton gin, a saloon, a church, a school, and a post office that opened in 1853. During the years of the Republic of Texas the Alabamas began leaving Peach Tree Village and moving five miles southeastward to the Fenced-in Village . In the 1850s Peach Tree Village was served by one of two mail routes across Tyler County, which connected with a route from Jasper to Swartout on the Trinity River in Polk County. Valentine Burch and other citizens of the community established a private academy, which served the area for a number of years. Dr. Stephen Pelham Willson, one of five doctors listed in the 1850 Tyler County census, located his store and office there and remained until his death. His son, Hiram A. Willson, a member of the Texas Constitutional Convention of 1876, also bought a farm and resided in this area. Peach Tree Village was the birthplace and boyhood home of one of East Texas's most outstanding industrialists- John Henry Kirby , who was born here on November 16, 1860. Known and remembered chiefly as a lumberman, Kirby was an able lawyer, a business executive, a banker, and an oil operator. He was also president of the Southwestern Oil Company of Houston and organized the Kirby Petroleum Company in 1920. In 1883 the Trinity and Sabine Railway was constructed into Tyler County, and Chester was built on the railroad two miles from Peach Tree Village. Soon the schools, commercial establishments, and postal service were moved to Chester, causing Peach Tree Village to die as a community. In 1912 Kirby erected a red brick chapel at Peach Tr

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Woodville, Texas

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Woodville, TX RoadyGoat

Woodville, TX RoadyGoat

Woodville, TX RoadyGoat

Work, Lt. Col. Philip A.

Shivers, Allan - Texas Statesman

Kirby, John Henry-and Education in Woodville

Woods, Zadock

Work, Philip Alexander

Peach Tree Village

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