Deweyville

Duane's take

The official marker's the source here, and here's how I tell it. Way out in Newton County, there's a little town called Deweyville, but don't let that name fool you into thinking it always went by something so dignified. No sir.

The original site had a name that suited the piney woods just fine. They called it Possum Bluff. Now in 1886, a man named Pierre Lavine bought that land from Bill Morrison.

And what did he pay for it? Not gold, not silver, not paper money. He paid with a team of oxen.

A genuine, living, breathing team of oxen. Whatever that parcel was worth to Bill Morrison, Pierre Lavine looked it square in the eye and said, here are my oxen, we're done. That's the kind of transaction that sticks in the memory.

Then came the Spanish-American War, and a certain Admiral George Dewey made enough of a name for himself that folks around Possum Bluff decided their town deserved a new one. Deweyville it became. Now a town needs more than a good name to survive out in those East Texas woods, and in 1897 the Sabine Tram Co. took care of that problem by building a sawmill.

That sawmill became the leading industry of the place. It was the heartbeat of the town. The Sabine Tram Co. ran it for years, and then in 1919 the Peavy-Moore Lumber Co. took ownership, holding on all the way through 1943.

From Possum Bluff to a sawmill town named for a war hero. Not a bad run for a piece of ground that once changed hands for a team of oxen.

What the marker says

Original site, called "Possum Bluff," was purchased with a team of oxen by Pierre Lavine from Bill Morrison, 1886. Town was renamed for Admiral George Dewey during Spanish-American War. Leading industry, sawmill, was built by Sabine Tram Co., 1897; and was owned 1919-1943 by Peavy-Moore Lumber Co.