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First Trinity County seat incorporates
On this day in 1862, the town of Sumpter, Texas, was incorporated.
Sumpter served as the first seat of government after the establishment
of Trinity County in 1850. Although a post office opened in 1851, the
town was not formally laid out until 1855. With the hope that the area
would become a railroad center, business and professional men flocked to
Sumpter, but after the Civil War the Houston and Great Northern Railroad
bypassed the town and the businesses began to leave. The courthouse
burned in 1872, and the town of Trinity became county seat on May 30,
1873. The post office at Sumpter closed the following year. The lumber
companies, having cut down the forests, departed, and farmers sold out
and moved. Sumpter, once the largest town in the county and sometime
home of outlaw John Wesley Hardin, became a ghost town. A cemetery, a
few large trees, and a historical marker in a field remain at the site.
- Links to Related Handbook of Texas Online Articles
- SUMPTER, TX
- TRINITY COUNTY
- HOUSTON AND GREAT NORTHERN RAILROAD
- TRINITY, TX
- HARDIN, JOHN WESLEY
- Other Texas Day by Day Articles for This Date
- Confederate Navy sinks Yankee ship (1863)
- Black veteran honored for war bond sales (1945)
- Texas troops captured at Arkansas Post (1863)
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