Hemphill County, Texas - People-Named Places on Waymarking.com

County of site: Hemphill County
Location of waymark: County Courthouse
Two markers used - Marker one: Location courthouse lawn
One erected by: The State of Texas
One erected in 1963
Marker two: Location at N 35° 55.396 W 100° 22.618 - US-60/83, city park, 1/4 mile N. of Canadian
Erected by: Texas Highway Commission
Erected in 1936

Marker One text:

Marker two text:

The Person:
"HEMPHILL, JOHN (1803–1862). John Hemphill, jurist and Confederate congressman, was born in Blackstock, Chester District, South Carolina, on December 18, 1803, the son of John and Jane (Lind) Hemphill. His father was a Presbyterian minister. Hemphill attended Jefferson College (now Washington and Jefferson) in Pennsylvania from 1823 to 1825 and graduated second in his class. He taught school for a while in South Carolina and in 1829 began to study law with David J. McCord in Columbia. After admission to practice in the court of Common Pleas in November 1829 he established a practice in Sumter District, South Carolina. In 1831 he was admitted to practice in the Court of Chancery. As a staunch advocate of states' rights, Hemphill edited a nullification newspaper in Sumter in 1832–33. In 1836 he volunteered for service in the Seminole War, in which he achieved the rank of second lieutenant.

"In the summer of 1838 he immigrated to Texas and established a legal practice at Washington-on-the-Brazos. In early 1840 the Congress of the Republic of Texas elected him judge of the Fourth Judicial District, an election that automatically made him an associate justice of the republic Supreme Court. He was confirmed in the office on January 20, 1840. On March 19, 1840, he participated in the Council House Fight in San Antonio. In 1840–41 Hemphill joined several campaigns against the Comanches, and in 1842–43, during a period when the Supreme Court did not meet, he served as adjutant general of the Somervell expedition. On December 5, 1840, the Congress elected him chief justice of the Supreme Court, a position he held until 1858. He was elected a delegate from Washington County to the Convention of 1845, where he cast his vote in favor of statehood. Governor James Pinckney Henderson appointed Hemphill to a six-year term as chief justice, and he was confirmed on March 2, 1846. After the selection of Supreme Court justices was transferred to the voters, Hemphill was elected chief justice on August 4, 1851, and again in 1856.

"As a jurist he took a particular interest in cases involving Spanish and Mexican law, which he had studied intensively, as well as those concerning marital rights, divorce, and homestead and other exemptions. He was noted for the "liberal construction" he placed on married women's rights and for his championship of homestead rights. His decisions are credited with substantially shaping the "form and content" of community property and homestead exemption law. Hemphill regretted the adoption of common law by the Texas Congress in 1840 and managed, in his written opinions, to preserve "something of the liberal spirit of the civil law." He was called the John Marshall of Texas for the significant role he played in the development of Texas jurisprudence.

"In November 1857 Democrats, dissatisfied with Sam Houston, nominated Hemphill to succeed Houston when the latter's senatorial term ended in March 1859. Hemphill was subsequently elected by the Texas Senate and took office on March 4, 1859. In January 1861 he delivered an address expressing his belief in the right of states to secede, and on January 6, 1861, he was one of fourteen senators who recommended the immediate withdrawal of the southern states. On February 4, 1861, the Secession Convention elected him one of seven Texas delegates to the convention of Southern states in Montgomery, Alabama, which became the Provisional Confederate Congress. He was subsequently expelled from the United States Senate by resolution on July 11, 1861.

"As a member of the Provisional Confederate Congress, Hemphill served on the Commercial and Financial Independence, Finance, and Judiciary committees and on the special committee to digest the laws. He devoted much of his attention to the task of adapting United States laws to Confederate purposes. In November 1861 he ran for a seat in the First Regular Congress but was narrowly defeated by Williamson S. Oldham. Before the end of the Provisional Congress Judge Hemphill died in Richmond, on January 4, 1862. His body was returned to Austin for burial in the State Cemetery. Never married, Hemphill was characterized as a private and reserved yet generous individual. Hemphill County, established on August 21, 1876, was named in his honor." ~ Texas State Historical Association online

The County:
Hemphill County lies in the rolling plains on the eastern edge of the Panhandle, east of the Texas High Plains. It is bordered on the east by Oklahoma, on the south by Wheeler County, on the west by Roberts County, and on the north by Lipscomb County. The center point of the county is at 35°50' north latitude and 100°15' west longitude. Canadian, the county seat, is eight to ten miles northwest of the center of the county and about 120 miles northeast of Amarillo. The county was named for John Hemphill. It comprises 904 square miles of rolling plains and rugged terrain, broken by two major rivers and dozens of creeks. The Canadian River flows easterly across the north central part of the county, and the Washita River flows west to east across the southern part. Red Deer Creek is the major tributary of the Canadian in the county; Gageby Creek is the largest county tributary of the Washita. More than three dozen smaller creeks drain into the two rivers. The elevation ranges from 2,200 to 2,800 feet above sea level. The county's clay loam, sandy loam, and alluvial soils support a variety of native grasses as well as wheat, grain sorghum, hay, and other cultivated grass crops. Some cottonwood and elm trees can be found in the numerous creekbottoms. Oil and natural gas also contribute to the local economy; oil production in 2000 was more than 505,000 barrels. The average annual rainfall is 20.5 inches, and the growing season averages 204 days a year; the average maximum temperature is 95° F in July, and the average minimum is 23° in January.

The Hemphill County region was originally populated by Apaches, who were pushed out by the early 1800s by the Kiowas and Comanches. During the era of Indian control various European expeditions penetrated the region. That of Francisco Vásquez de Coronado possibly crossed the county in 1543 or 1544. The Long expedition, an American venture, certainly crossed the county in 1820, as did Josiah Gregg in 1839. Capt. Randolph B. Marcy surveyed several routes to California in 1849, including one that crossed Hemphill County along the divide between the Canadian and Washita rivers. During the 1870s buffalo hunters entered the Panhandle, and by 1878 the last of the great southern herd had been killed. At the same time, the Indians were crushed and moved to reservations in Indian Territory. In the Red River War of 1873–74 the United States Army defeated the Comanches and Kiowas in their Panhandle refuge. Several military encounters occurred in Hemphill County, including the famous Buffalo Wallow Fight, which took place in the southern part of the county on September 12, 1874. The defeated Indians were forced into Indian Territory in 1875 and 1876.

While the Indian wars raged and the buffalo hunters worked away, several trails were opened to link the Texas Panhandle to Dodge City, Kansas, the closest town of any size. The Jones and Plummer Trail, laid out by two buffalo hunters in 1874, ran from the site of present-day Mobeetie northward to Dodge City. In 1876 Charles Rath extended this trail southward to Fort Griffin, in Shackelford County. The Government Trail, laid out in 1874, ran from Fort Elliott, in Wheeler County, northeastward across Hemphill County toward Indian Territory as it made its way to Fort Supply. These well-used and well-defined trails, originally used by the army and hunters, soon also brought ranchers and herds of longhorn cattle into the area.

The era of open-range ranching began in Hemphill County even before the end of the buffalo. In 1875, A. G. Springer established a temporary ranch in the eastern part of the county, and a handful of other settlers followed in 1876 and 1877. Hemphill County was formed by the Texas legislature in 1876. Investors began to purchase lands in the county for large-scale ranching during the late 1870s, when the Cresswell Ranch, headquartered in Roberts County, came to occupy much of western Hemphill County. In 1878 the Moody-Andrews Land and Cattle Company established its PO Ranch in the western and central sections of the county. By 1880 fourteen ranches with combined herds of about 9,600 cattle had been established in the county; the United States census found 149 people living there that year. Cattle ranching continued to dominate the local economy until the early twentieth century. The Rhodes and Aldridge Cattle Company established a large ranch in Hemphill County in 1881, and in 1883 the Texas Land and Cattle Company established the Laurel Leaf Ranch in the eastern part of the county.

But the sale of school lands and state lands, begun in the mid-1880s, coupled with the terrible winter of 1886, spelled the end of the open range. By the late 1880s stock farmers and smaller ranchers began to take over the range. The early 1890s saw a county covered with smaller, privately owned and fenced ranching operations in place of the unfenced, public-domain, free-range empires. The arrival of the railroad also had much to do with this transformation. The Southern Kansas Railway Company, a Santa Fe subsidiary, began to build a line into the Panhandle in 1886. The tracks crossed Hemphill County during 1887 and reached the town of Panhandle in 1888. The railroad allowed easier access to the outside world and encouraged settlement in the area. It also spawned three townsites, Mendota, Canadian, and Glazier. The arrival of the railroad and the founding of Canadian led to the establishment of county government. Hemphill County was attached to Wheeler County for administrative purposes until 1887, when a petition for organization was circulated. An organizational election was held in July of that year, and Canadian was made county seat. Though Hemphill County developed steadily during the late nineteenth century, in 1900 it remained an isolated ranching area. The number of ranches grew from forty-two in 1890 to seventy-six in 1900; during the same period the population increased from 519 to 815. Aside from 159 acres devoted to growing corn and 1,858 acres on which forage was cultivated, almost no crops were grown in the county at that time. Meanwhile, the number of cattle had increased from about 6,300 in 1890 to almost 39,000 by 1900.

The area's economy began to diversify after 1900, partly because of the expansion of the local railroad industry. When Canadian became a railroad division point in 1907, a great deal of railroad construction and employment followed; the situation lasted until 1922, when the division point was moved eastward to Oklahoma. Farmers also began to arrive after 1900 and take up the level, tillable land. The number of farms and ranches in the county grew from 76 in 1900 to 249 in 1910, 328 in 1920, and 401 in 1930.

"A boundary dispute involving Hemphill County arose in the 1920s. As a result, a United States Supreme Court decision in 1930 led to the relocation of the 100th meridian, the eastern border of the Panhandle, approximately 3,700 feet to the east. This strip, 132 miles long, expanded Lipscomb, Wheeler, Hemphill, Collingsworth, and Childress counties at the expense of Harmon, Ellis, Beckham, and Roger Mills counties in Oklahoma.

By 1930 crops were grown on 86,000 acres in Hemphill County. Meanwhile, the cattle industry remained vital to the local economy; in 1930 the agricultural census counted over 55,000 cattle in the county. Poultry was also beginning to become significant; by 1930 almost 28,000 chickens were counted on local farms, and that year the county's farmers sold more than 137,300 dozen eggs. As the county's economy grew and diversified, its population increased, from 3,170 in 1910 to 4,280 in 1920 and 4,637 in 1930.

Growth was stifled in the 1930s, however, when the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl wiped out many local farmers. Cotton acreage dropped by more than 50 percent, to only about 6,900 acres in 1940. Hundreds of people left the county, and the population declined to 4,170 by 1940.

Subsequently, between the 1940s and the 1970s, the mechanization of agriculture combined with other factors to depopulate the area further. The population of Hemphill County dropped to 4,123 by 1950, 3,185 by 1960, and 3,084 by 1970. During the 1970s, however, the county grew, thanks to a rapid expansion of oil production.

County transportation developed significantly during the first half of the twentieth century and improved afterward. Between 1918 and 1921 local boosters attracted construction of the Dallas-to-Denver highway (now U.S. 83) through Canadian. Old Highway 33 (now U.S. 60), from Oklahoma to Amarillo, was built through the county during 1925 and 1926. In the 1940s and 1950s these major routes were paved, and a network of paved rural roads was constructed.

n national politics the voters of Hemphill County supported Democratic presidential candidates in almost every election from 1888 to 1948; In presidential elections between 1952 and 2004, however, county voters consistently supported Republican candidates. The only Democrat to win in the county during that period was Lyndon B. Johnson, who defeated Barry Goldwater in 1964." ~ TSHA online

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