DUANE
Duane's take
Here's my telling of what the official marker at Smyrna Union Church has to say — and friend, this one goes deep into the roots of American agriculture. Now, the building you're looking at is a house of worship, but the ground it stands on holds a different kind of history — older even than the church itself. Because right here, on this very site, there once stood a schoolhouse.
And inside that schoolhouse, on September 2, 1902, something was born that would reach far beyond Rains County, far beyond Texas, far beyond anything ten men gathered in a rural schoolhouse might have dared to imagine. Ten men. That's all it took.
Ten residents of this area who sat down together and decided the agricultural world needed something it didn't yet have. They called it the Farmers Educational and Cooperative Union of America — what the world would come to know as the National Farmers Union — and this was its first local union. The very first.
Now those ten men had a stated purpose, and they put it plainly: to secure equity, establish justice, and apply the Golden Rule. Not complicated. Not flowery.
Just three aims that cut straight to the bone of what farming families needed from a hard and sometimes indifferent world. Their names deserve to be spoken out loud. Jesse Adams.
W. T. Cochran.
Tom Donaldson. Newt Gresham. J.
B. Morris. T.
J. Pound. O.
H. Rhodes. Dr.
Lee Seamster. W. S.
Sisk. And J. S.
Turner. Ordinary names, maybe. Neighbors.
Farmers. Men who knew this land. And yet the organization they established here has become known and respected throughout the agricultural world — that's not my words, that's the marker's, and I wouldn't change a syllable.
The tablet honoring those ten men was presented by James G. Patton, President of the National Farmers Union, out of Denver, Colorado. A president of a national organization coming back to a small church in Rains County to say: it started here.
Right here. Some things do begin exactly where you're standing.
What the marker says
This house of worship is the site of the old school house in which, on Sept. 2, 1902, Farmers Educational and Cooperative Union of America (National Farmers Union) established its first local union. The stated purpose was "To secure equity, establish justice and apply the Golden Rule." The ten men who founded "Farmers Union" were residents of this area. The organization which they here established has become known and respected throughout the agricultural world. This tablet is erected to honor their names and memory. Jesse Adams, W. T. Cochran, Tom Donaldson, Newt Gresham, J. B. Morris, T. J. Pound, O. H. Rhodes, Dr. Lee Seamster, W. S. Sisk, and J. S. Turner; presented by James G. Patton, President, National Farmers Union, Denver, Colorado.