Stratton

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Way out in DeWitt County, before the guns of the Civil War had even been cleaned and put away, a little community was already taking shape. They called it Stratton, named for a man named John Stratton, a saddler out of Cuero who had land interests in the vicinity.

A saddler. Not a general, not a land baron, not some hero on a horse. A man who worked leather, who had a stake in the ground out here, and whose name stayed on the map long after he was gone.

There's something to that. The community grew into the center of a large agricultural area. And when a settlement becomes the center of something, it needs to have the parts that hold it together.

Stratton had those parts. A post office, running from 1887 to 1905. A general store.

A school. A cotton gin. A drugstore.

And blacksmith shops, plural, because when you're farming hard country, you cannot afford for your iron to sit idle. Then there's the Primitive Baptist Church. Now this congregation had a story of its own before it ever arrived in Stratton.

It was organized in 1883, and not here. It was organized at a place called Burnt Camp, over in Lavaca County. Whatever happened at Burnt Camp, that church held together, and in 1914 it made the move to Stratton and set down roots.

Out at the Alexander Cemetery, the pioneer settlers of this area rest alongside two veterans of the Civil War. The community that gathered around a saddler's land, that built its gin and its store and its school, that welcomed a traveling church, left its people right here in DeWitt County soil. Stratton never became a big city.

But it had everything a place needs to matter.

What the marker says

The pioneer community of Stratton, which developed as the center of a large agricultural area, was established here before the Civil War. It was named for John Stratton, a Cuero saddler who had land interests in the vicinity. The settlement had a post office from 1887 to 1905, a general store, school, cotton gin, drugstore and blacksmith shops. The Primitive Baptist Church, organized in 1883 at Burnt Camp in Lavaca County, moved here in 1914. Pioneer area settlers and two veterans of the Civil War are buried in the community's Alexander Cemetery.