FIRST Teacher at Rawhide School - Murphy, TX - First of its Kind on Waymarking.com

The historical marker provides some background:

Herring-Hogge Cemetery on South Murphy Road and Skyline was established in the 1870's and contains the graves of the Herring, Hogge, and McAmis families who were among the earliest settlers in Collin County.

Daniel Herring (1812-1882) was born in North Carolina and arrived in Texas in 1848 with his wife Mary Deck Herring. They had ten children. Widowed, he married Elizabeth Jane Newman and had eight children. Daniel received a head right of 640 acres of free land in Texas which straddled both Collin and Dallas Counties. The homestead was located on the highest point of land on what today is Sunset Drive. He cultivated over 300 acres of crops and was one of the wealthiest settlers in the area.

Eli Hogge (1828-1883), born in South Carolina, arrived in Texas in the 1850's. He married Sarah Jane Herring and had eleven children. He joined the Confederacy under General Johnston and was wounded at the Battle of Shiloh. The Hogge homestead was near Parker. He purchased land east of Trinity River and built a bridge across the river at Hogge Crossing. In addition to farming, he was the first teacher at Rawhide School, east of Parker, postmaster at Dump, and mail carrier between Wylie and Princeton.

James K. McAmis (1847-1931) was born in Lamar County, Texas. At the age of 14 he enlisted in the Confederacy and fought in the Battles of Pea Ridge, Arkansas, and Stone's River, Tennessee. He was wounded and sent to a Tennessee hospital to recover. In 1867, he deserted and returned home to marry Martha A. Herring, daughter of Eli and Sally Herring. They had twelve children and lived about 1/3 mile from Rowlett Creek in Sachse.

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While this marker is located in a cemetery in Murphy, it refers to Parker, to the north, and indirectly, to settlements to the northeast (or east of Parker, as the marker states). The town of St. Paul was issued a Texas Historical Marker some years ago, and the narrative on which the marker was based is still online (see below). It notes that an early settler and prominent landowner, Mark L. Morris, was involved in establishing a Methodist church in the area in the 1850s. There was a school building that the Methodist Church shared, but by 1873, Morris and Elizabeth Skelton had deeded the property for a budding school district which bore Morris's name. According to the narrative, the school building was about 16' x 12', with one room and a dirt floor. It had three rows of benches made of split logs to accommodate about fifty students. Its roof was made of oak blocks, and there was a fireplace to keep everybody warm. It was shared by several local churches on Sundays. What got the school its name was the use of rawhide hinges to support the building's five windows, and there was piece of rawhide used as a door. Hair side out, it had to be raised in order to enter. At some point, the Morris and St. Paul schools combined because their individual communities were not large enough to support their own schools.

FIRST - Classification Variable: Person or Group Date of FIRST: 01/01/1873 More Information - Web URL: [Web Link]

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