DUANE
Duane's take
Here's my telling of what the official marker has to say about the Ben Cannon Ferry, out in Cherokee County. Now before there were bridges, before there were railroads, before most folks in East Texas could even agree on how to spell a man's name — there was the Neches River, and somebody had to get you across it. Native American peoples and early Anglo settlers both knew this particular stretch of the Neches.
They forded it right here, at a place called Duty Crossing — named for an early settler by the name of Richard Duty. That's the kind of immortality the frontier offered: you find a good river crossing, and your name sticks to it. But the story that marker tells by name is the Ben Cannon Ferry.
First time it shows up in the official record is 1848 — right there in the Cherokee County Commissioners court records. That's your documentation, your proof that this was a real, recognized, significant operation. And a pioneer settler named Ben Canon — spelled with one n, mind you, though the ferry carries two — he worked that crossing, running folks and freight across the Neches until 1851.
Now here's where it gets interesting. By 1854, a toll bridge had gone up just north of the old ferry site. And that bridge didn't go anywhere — it operated all the way through 1924.
Seventy years of traffic rolling across the Neches at a spot that started out as nothing more than a ford and a flat-bottomed boat. And if you look just north of where Ben Canon once poled his ferry? The route of the Texas State Railroad crosses the Neches right there.
The river didn't change. The crossing point barely moved. What changed was everything else — the means, the machinery, the century.
Some places just have a pull to them. The Neches had to be crossed, and this was the spot. Richard Duty knew it.
Ben Canon knew it. And the bridge builders and the railroad men, they knew it too.
What the marker says
Native American and early Anglo settlers in this region forded the Neches River at this site, called Duty Crossing for early settler Richard Duty. A significant link in the history of transportation across the river, the Ben Cannon Ferry is first documented in Cherokee County Commissioners court records in 1848. Pioneer settler Ben Canon operated the Ferry until 1851. A toll bridge operated north of the ferry site from 1854 to 1924. The route of the Texas State Railroad crosses the Neches just north of the ferry site.