BLOCKER, TEXAS (Harrison County). Blocker, on Farm Road 2625 six miles southeast of Marshall in southeastern Harrison County, is the site of the brick plantation home of Henry Ware, who moved to the county in the early 1840s. Ware is said to have introduced new stock, machinery, and farm implements to the section; he grew wheat and operated a flour mill and a woolen mill, said to be the first in Texas and perhaps in the South. He operated a tannery and manufactured boots and shoes. During the Civil War he ran his machinery full-time until the Confederate surrender closed his industries. When the Marshall and East Texas Railway was built, Blocker became a thriving settlement with a mill, a commissary, and over 400 voters. The community seems to have been named for Dr. Eugene Blocker, a member of the prominent Blocker family of Marshall, who married Ware's oldest daughter, Fannie Asbury Ware, in 1861. The Blocker community had a post office from 1910 to 1927 and in 1914 had an estimated 300 inhabitants. The town declined after the mill was partially destroyed by fire and the railroad was discontinued. In 1946 there were some thirty-five voters left at the community. In 1983 Blocker consisted of a cemetery and several scattered dwellings.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Randolph B. Campbell, A Southern Community in Crisis: Harrison County, Texas, 1850–1880 (Austin: Texas State Historical Association, 1983). Carol Morris Little, Historic Harrison County (Longview, Texas, 1984).
