DUANE
Duane's take
The official marker tells this one, and I'm just here to do it justice. Now settle in, because this is a story about what happens when a whole society has to build itself from scratch — right here in East Texas, in the middle of a war. Texas had very few factories in 1861 when she joined the Confederate States of America and went to war on the issue of states' rights.
Very few. So when the need for military goods came pressing down, some of the manufacturing plants necessary to supply those goods had to be established on the spot, in and around the city of Marshall. And Marshall was no small player in all this — by 1863 it had become the headquarters for Confederate operations west of the Mississippi River.
The whole western theater was being coordinated right there in Harrison County. Now here is the detail that stops you cold. Down in the basement of a dwelling house — not some grand factory floor, not a purpose-built facility — just the basement of somebody's home, men were making hats.
Military hats. They were pulling high quality fur felt all the way from a plant situated on Young's Mill Pond, near Hallsville, thirteen miles to the west, and in that basement they were blocking and finishing hats to outfit Texas soldiers and other troops fighting for the Confederacy. Some forty men worked at that site.
Forty men, in a basement, also turning out blankets and saddle blankets. The whole operation quiet and domestic on the outside, essential on the inside. After the war, successive generations of the Edmund Key family owned and occupied that house.
The hat factory was gone, but the walls that had held it stood on. Then in 1962, the structure burned. Gone for good.
And so in 1975, the Key family tendered the site to the Harrison County Conservation Society as a park — dedicated in memory of civic leaders Edmund and Rae Lyttleton Key. Forty men in a basement, and now a park to remember it by. That's Marshall for you.
The story was always bigger than the building.
What the marker says
Texas had very few factories in 1861 when she joined the Confederate States of America and went to war on the issue of states' rights. Some of the manufacturing plants necessary to supply military goods were thereupon established in and around Marshall, which later (1863) became headquarters for Confederate operations west of the Mississippi River. At the site of this marker, there was operated in the basement of a dwelling house a factory which brought high quality fur felt from a plant situated on Young's Mill Pond near Hallsville (13 mi. W). and made military hats to outfit Texas soldiers and other troops fighting for the Confederacy. Some 40 men were employed here in blocking and finishing hats and in making blankets and saddle blankets. Successive generations of the Edmund Key family owned and occupied the house where the Confederate Hat Factory had been operated during the Civil War. After the structure burned in 1962 the Key family tendered (in 1975) the site to the Harrison County Conservation Society as a park dedicated in memory of civic leaders Edmund and Rae Lyttleton Key.