A central find

"We the undersigned, commissioners, appointed by Congress to view, mark and lay out the Central National Road from Trinity to Red River, will meet the other two commissioners, viz: R.W. Box of Houston county and James Bradshaw of Nacogdoches county, at Dallas on the Trinity River on the 15th of April next to commence operations. Those who wish to take contracts for opening said road will do well to accompany the commissioners."

The Northern Standard. (Clarksville, Tex.), Vol. 2, No. 16, Ed. 1, Saturday, March 2, 1844

Yesterday afternoon, instead of watching football and MeTV all day I got in the truck and began to head east along US 380. After an hour I ventured into Greenville where I took some photos of downtown and while I found a few gems,

 

it paled in comparison to the piece of history I uncovered a few miles north of town on US 69.

 

A 1926 granite boulder and a bronze marker informing the roadie of the following: " This stone marks the location of the Central National Road of the Republic of Texas Surveyed and established by virtue of an act of the Congress of the Republic of Texas in 1844, and running from the Trinity River to the Red River, it crossed the highway near this point. 'An old road is the soul of the past.' Placed by the Thomas Wynne Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution 1926" The body developed shivers.

Not only did I discover a piece of roadside history, but of early Texas history...during the years of the Republic.

1844 was just before the state was formally admitted into the United States, an act outgoing President John Tyler heavily pushed as he was heading out of office.  For non-Texan residents or those who may think "Ok, this is pretty neat, but so...," the road helped northeast Texas to increase growth and development. However, that is just the beginning.

In 1844, according to the March 2nd edition of the Clarksville Northern Standard, a five man commission (Jason Wilson and Wm. M. Williams of Lamar County, John Yeaty of Fannin County, Rowland W. Box of Houston County and James Bradshaw of Nacogdoches County) was created to "lay out a road to be called the 'Central National Road of the Republic of Texas.'" It was to run from the Trinity River near the mouth of Elm Fork to the bank of the Red River opposite the mouth of Kiamichi. An interesting stipulation, "For each hand or assistant Surveyor, engaged in the surveying said road, shall be entitled to six hundred and forty acres of land" (of course assuming they "truly perform the duties of assistant Surveyor")

According to J.W. Williams in his piece for The Southwestern Historical Quarterly called "The National Road of the Republic of Texas," less than two months after the start of the project, Major Stell led the crew as they began at "a certain cedar tree on the bank of the Trinity River" (p.208) and thirty days later, the project was completed in the Red River bottom in the northwest portion of Red River County. "The National Road, instead of beginning at a dead-end on the Trinity and ending at another dead-end on Red River, connected the roads of Texas with the military roads from Fort Towson into the United States. It connected Saint Louis with San Antonio, and was, in fact, an international highway" (p.220). Greenville, just 10 minutes southeast of the marker, became a county seat shortly thereafter. As a result, the plethora of migrants heading west caused many roads to share in the augmenting amount of wagon traffic through Old Preston Road, which played a key role in another migratory route and John Neely Bryan's crossing on the Trinity in Dallas.

Sources:
Clarksville Northern Standard, March 2, 1844.

J. W. Williams, "The National Road of the Republic of Texas," Southwestern Historical Quarterly 47 (January 1944)