B. F. Morris and the Town of Joaquin

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and here's how I'm gonna lay it out for you. Way back in 1838, a young man named Benjamin Franklin Morris made his way to Texas from Alabama. He was born in 1827, and he didn't waste much time putting down roots.

He settled in the area that would grow into the pioneer village of Sarat, out in Shelby County, and he went to work. Farming, ranching, building something out of the East Texas piney woods. By all accounts, he did pretty well for himself.

Prosperous, the marker says, and that word carries weight when you're talking about frontier Texas. Now, here's where the story gets interesting. In 1884, the Houston, East and West Texas Railroad came lookin' for a path through the region, and Morris, he didn't just let them pass.

He gave right of way through five hundred acres of his own land. Five hundred acres. That is not a small gesture.

But he wasn't done. He also put forward a hundred-acre townsite, and he had one request to go along with it. Build a depot here, he said, and make sure passenger trains stop daily.

And the name of that new town? He asked that it be named Joaquin, after his grandson, born in 1878 and gone by 1898. A young man, taken early, and his grandfather made sure a whole town would carry his name forward.

Morris himself was a Confederate veteran, and before his own death in 1900, he made one more contribution to the place he had helped bring into existence. He donated a building site for the First Baptist Church of Joaquin. One man, one stretch of East Texas land, and a town that still carries his grandson's name today.

What the marker says

Alabama-born Benjamin Franklin Morris (1827-1900) came to Texas in 1838 and settled in the area that became the pioneer village of Sarat. A prosperous farmer and rancher, he gave right of way through 500 acres of his land to the Houston, East & West Texas Railroad in 1884. He also provided a 100-acre townsite to be named for his grandson Joaquin (1878-1898), requesting that a depot be built here and that passenger trains stop daily. Morris, a Confederate veteran, later donated a building site for the First Baptist Church of Joaquin.