Site of Old Gilmer

Duane's take

Here's my telling of what the official marker says about the site of old Gilmer, out in Upshur County. Now, picture yourself standin on the Cherokee Trace. That old trail runnin through East Texas, and right here, right on this very ground, there was a town.

Early Gilmer. Not the Gilmer you might know today, but the first one, the original article. In 1845, before there was a proper building, before there was a bench or a gavel or a single stick of official furniture, the first Upshur County Court convened.

Right here. Under an oak tree. You think about that for a second.

The business of the county, the law of the land, conducted in the open air with nothing but branches overhead and the Cherokee Trace running past. Then spring of 1846 rolls around, and Judge O. M.

Roberts steps in with a slightly more refined solution. He designated the nearby W. H.

Hart home as the courthouse. A man's house, pressed into the service of justice, to hold things together until a permanent county seat could be, and I love this, carefully located. Those were the actual words.

Carefully located. Somebody wanted it known they weren't just throwin darts at a map. And that first community, that oak-shaded, trace-side gathering place?

The Old Gilmer Cemetery sits one mile north. Still there. The town may have moved on, but the people who built it under that oak, they stayed.

Sometimes the most official thing around is just a tree and the will to show up.

What the marker says

Here on the Cherokee Trace was early Gilmer. On this spot in 1845 the first Upshur County Court convened under an oak. In spring 1846, Judge O. M. Roberts designated the nearby W. H. Hart home as courthouse until a permanent county seat could be "carefully located." Old Gilmer Cemetery is one mile north.