B. H. Norsworthy

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Born in Alabama on November 26, 1838, B. H.

Norsworthy was the kind of man who seemed to find trouble, or maybe trouble found him. In 1860, he packed up and migrated to Texas, and then the whole country went sideways. When the Civil War came, Norsworthy didn't sit still.

He organized a Confederate unit called the Lone Star Rifles. Now that name carries a certain weight, and so did the fighting that followed. At the Battle of Thompson's Station in Tennessee in 1863, Norsworthy was wounded.

He kept going. Then came the Battle of Jonesboro, Georgia in 1864, and he was wounded again. Two battles, two wounds, and still he held on, rising to the rank of lieutenant colonel.

That's not a career, that's a reckoning. After the war, life had to be rebuilt, and Norsworthy set about doing it. In the 1870s he moved to Orange, Texas, and put down new roots as a merchant and a rice farmer.

Quiet work, maybe, compared to what had come before, but steady. And the people of Orange took notice. They elected him mayor, not once, not twice, but three times.

A man born in Alabama in 1838, who came to Texas, who bled on two separate battlefields, who outlasted it all and found his way to a town that kept asking him to lead it. He died on February 21, 1901. Some stories don't need embellishing.

They just need to be told straight.

What the marker says

(Nov. 26, 1838-Feb. 21, 1901) Alabama native B. H. Norsworthy migrated to Texas in 1860. During the Civil War he organized a Confederate unit known as the Lone Star Rifles. Wounded at the Battle of Thompson's Station in Tennessee (1863) and the Battle of Jonesboro, Georgia (1864), he attained the rank of lieutenant colonel. In the 1870s Norsworthy moved to Orange, where he worked as a merchant and a rice farmer. He was later elected to three terms as mayor of the city. Recorded - 1980