East Texas History
A project by Sam Houston State UniversityEast Texas History is a free mobile app and web platform that places the past at your fingertips. Designed by the History Department at Sam Houston State University, the project seeks to highlight the distinctive people, places, and events that have shaped East Texas. Viewers may learn about the region through our interactive, map-based interface that includes historical stories, photographs, and oral interviews. Follow our progress on Twitter or connect with us on Facebook to learn more about the project or to become a participating author.
Read more About UsFeatured Stories
Smithers Plantation Recordings
To collect authentic, undocumented folk music, John A. Lomax and his son Alan specifically sought out "made up" songs, ones that had been created and developed by everyday people. In 1934, while searching for the local and secular music of…
Lufkin Recordings
During their field recording sessions in fall 1940, John A. and Ruby T. Lomax visited the Lufkin area collecting songs that ranged from gospel music to blues to popular 19th century tunes.
In Keltys, a lumber mill town then just outside of…
Grant's Colony
The story of Grant’s Colony complicates the narrative of the Reconstruction Era in Walker County, which is typically one of violence, despair, and intimidation. For while the Yellow Fever outbreak of 1867, the Walker County Rebellion of 1870-71, and…
Featured Tours
The Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1867
12 Locations ~ Curated by Zachary Doleshal, Ph.D., SHSU Public History Students of 2017Random Stories
Civilian Conservation Corps Camp and District Headquarters - Lufkin, Texas
Established in 1882, the town of Lufkin grew up amidst a regional timber boom that shaped East Texas. During the late nineteenth century, as national population growth and industrial development exhausted the few remaining hardwood forests in the…
General John Slater Besser
Born in Northumberland County, Pennsylvania, on August 13, 1802, John Slater Besser was a first generation American. His father, Jacob Besser, was a native of Heidelberg, German, and his mother Susannah (Tinsley) Besser hailed from London, England.…
Manning Texas
In 1863, Dr. W.W. Manning, a native of Monroe, Louisiana, constructed a small sawmill in Angelina County close to the Neches River. The enterprise proved at least moderately successful, and Manning expanded his business in 1885, adding one of the…
Texas Electric Cooperatives Pole Manufacturing Plant
A forest of pine trees passes through the Texas Electric Cooperatives, Inc.'s (TEC) Pole Manufacturing Plant in Jasper each year. The facility's giant bark-peeling machine strips logs as long as one hundred feet to make forty-foot poles for…
The Country Doctor (1835-1940)
The statue represents the doctors who worked night and day to serve the public between 1835 and 1940. The Country Doctor was made in the likeness of Dr. George F. Middlebrook Sr, whose decade-long career began in 1911, but the statue does not…
Joshua Houston
Born in 1822, Joshua Houston was raised as a slave on the Lea plantation near Marion, Alabama. When his master, Temple Lea, died in 1834, ownership of Joshua was transferred to Temple's daughter, Margaret Lea. There seems to have been little…