DUANE
Duane's take
Here's my telling of what the official marker has to say about The Grove, out in Gregg County. Now, before Longview was Longview — before the town even had that name, which it took in 1870 — there was a stand of natural timber already there, already waiting. People called it the Grove.
And some traditions run deep enough that no deed, no surveyor, no city charter can really explain them. Tradition holds that the area's freedmen were gathering in that Grove for worship services as early as the 1860s. Before any transaction, before any official record changed hands — people were meeting there, under those trees, and lifting something up.
Then, in 1871, a man named John R. Magrill sold that one-acre grove tract to the town's African American population. One acre.
Acting on the community's behalf were three men: O.J. Taylor, Silas Billup, and Alick Berry. Three names worth saying slowly, because what they did was hold something in trust for an entire people.
Over the years — and we're talking decades here — the Grove served as an important gathering place for Longview's African American community. That's not decoration. That's the whole weight of the thing.
A place that was theirs. Now, here's where the story takes a turn worth noticing. Come the 1930s, efforts to acquire that land for oil production failed.
And why? Confusion over the title. The very legal tangle of who owned what, passed down through the years, turned out to be the thing that kept those trees out of the hands of the oil men.
You couldn't write that better if you tried. The city eventually adopted the land for use as a park. Today it goes by the name Magrill Plaza — carrying forward the name of the man who made that 1871 sale, on a piece of ground where people had been gathering long before anyone thought to write it down.
What the marker says
The Grove The Grove was a natural timber stand within what became Longview in 1870. Tradition holds that the area's freedmen gathered in the Grove for worship services as early as the 1860s. In 1871, John R. Magrill sold the one-acre grove tract to the town's African American population. Acting on their behalf were O.J. Taylor, Silas Billup and Alick Berry. Over the years, the Grove was an important gathering place for the local African American community. Efforts in the 1930s to acquire the land for oil production failed due to confusion over the title, and the city later adopted the land for use as a park, now known as Magrill Plaza. (2003)