Historic Walker County

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Above: Thomas Jewett Goree
(1835-1905).
COURTESY OF THE TEXAS PRISON MUSEUM.
Below: The home of the
superintendent of the Texas
Prison System.
COURTESY OF THE HUNTSVILLE
ARTS COMMISSION.
state during the war. Some local figures, like
James Gillaspie, even took a lead role in
organizing their own units. As a veteran of the
Texas Revolution and Mexican War, Gillaspie
raised a six-month company to serve in the 5th
Texas Infantry, under the command of Colonel
E. B. Nichols. Many of the men from this
company, which was mustered out of service in
March 1862, joined the 20th Texas Infantry at
Galveston that summer. Henry Marshall Elmore,
one of the founding fathers of Waverly, Texas,
organized the 20th Infantry, and, with Leonard
Abercrombie as lieutenant colonel, helped lead
its effort to patrol the Texas coast and recapture
Galveston in January 1863. 35
Company H of the 4th Texas Infantry (the
Porter Guards) was the first Civil War unit
organized in Walker County to serve outside the
state of Texas. Established in Huntsville with
148-members on May 7, 1861, the unit was led
initially by Proctor P. Porter of Montgomery
County. When Porter died of typhoid fever after
the battle of Gaines’ Mill in July 1862, however,
Captain James T. Hunter of Walker County
took command of the unit. Hunter was the
son of the co-founder of Cincinnati—George
Elliott Hunter—and he led his men in John
Bell Hood’s Texas Brigade through some of
the bloodiest battles of the war, including
Second Manassas, Antietam, Gettysburg,
Chickamauga, and the Wilderness. In fact,
Hunter was among only eleven remaining
members of Company H when his unit
surrendered at Appomattox in 1865. 36
Hunter’s unit was not the only local group to
fight in the Eastern Theater during the war. Men
from Walker County also joined Company D (the
Waverly Confederates) and Company H (the
Texas Polk Rifles) of the 5th Texas Infantry, which
served with Hood’s Brigade in Virginia. Despite
the historic role that these troops played in the
war, Thomas Jewett Goree remains perhaps the
best-known soldier from the Walker County area.
In 1861, Goree left his law practice and boarded
a boat from Galveston for the war in Virginia. On
board, he met and formed a friendship with
Major James Longstreet, who had recently
resigned his position in the U.S. Army and was
traveling to Virginia to join the Confederate
Army. Goree served as aide-de-camp for
Longstreet throughout the war, participating in
many crucial battles of the period including
Antietam, Fredericksburg, and Gettysburg. 37
As soldiers from Walker County fought
around the South, local citizens supported the
war effort and sent supplies and encouragement
to the men on the front lines. At the same time,
the Texas government capitalized on the use of
a cotton and woolen mill housed at the
penitentiary in Huntsville. From December 1,
1861, to August 31, 1863, prisoners produced
1 8 ✦ H I S T O R I C W A L K E R C O U N T Y