DUANE
Duane's take
Here's how the official marker tells it — my job's just to do it justice. Now, Hunt County, Texas. Picture the 1850s.
The land is raw, the summers are long, and folks out here are working sunup to sundown just to keep a farm breathing. Then a man named Richard Harrell — born in 1813 — goes and builds something. Cabins.
A brush arbor. Right there on the banks of the Sabine River. And what he builds becomes one of the first religious sites in all of Hunt County.
That's not nothin'. That's everything, in a place where almost nothing yet existed. What Harrell planted at that campground would draw people for fifty years.
Fifty years of summers. Think on that a moment. When the crops were growin' and the work had gone just a little slack, families from many counties would pack up everything they had — and I do mean everything.
Milch cows. Cook stoves. Bedding.
Wash tubs. Water barrels. They would load all of it up, ford the Sabine River, and come to camp for weeks at a stretch.
Children and adults alike singing hymns, studying scriptures, listening to sermons. Now, some folks today might hear that itinerary and figure it sounds a little thin for entertainment. But these were hard lives.
Lonely lives. And the sound of a hymn rising out of a brush arbor on a summer evening, surrounded by neighbors you only saw once a year — that wasn't thin at all. That was about the richest thing going.
And when the camp meetings ended and the families headed back home with their cows and their wash tubs and their water barrels, the campground didn't go quiet. No. Passing travelers in those months between gatherings found shelter there too.
Richard Harrell lived until 1895, long enough to see what he'd built truly take root. One man, some cabins, a brush arbor, and fifty years of souls finding their way to the Sabine. Some landmarks are made of stone.
This one was made of something that carried a good deal further.
What the marker says
One of first religious sites in Hunt County. Influential for 50 years. Cabins and brush arbor built in 1850s by early settler Richard Harrell (1813-1895). Methodist gospel services drew people here from many counties, in summers while crops grew and work was slack. With milch cows, cook stoves, bedding, wash tubs, water barrels, families forded Sabine River to camp for weeks. Children and adults sang hymns, studied scriptures, listened to sermons-- diversions in hard and lonely lives. In months between camp meetings, passing travelers often were sheltered in camp.