November 10, 2015 - As I prepare for a new topic for the 2016 issues of “We the People of Shelby County," it seems an appropriate time to reflect on our issues of 2015. Their theme was focused on our historic square, and the topic turned out to be as challenging as it was enjoyable.
Since I grew up in Center in mid-20th century, I recognized and loved the ambiance of our unique square and courthouse, but my research for writing about them provided a renewed appreciation of our history. In the process, I discovered some interesting facts I otherwise would never have known. Perhaps the most interesting were those that suggested how the particular site was chosen.
As many readers already know, the Texas State Legislature as early as 1848 gave a specific guideline about where county seats should be: as near as possible to the middle of the county. This set the stage for our square's establishment. It was not just Shelby County that would be affected; it applied also to Panola (Pulaski to Carthage), Sabine (Milam to Hemphill), and many other counties throughout the state. The fact is, then, starting almost twenty years before Sam Weaver and Judge R. L. Parker moved the county records in 1866, it was expected that the county seat would be moved.
There were at least five reasons other than being near the middle of the county that helped shape the choice of the site in its present location: 1) the combined expertise of Weaver (as surveyor) and Parker (as county official); 2) its location as a high point in the area; 3) a pending donation of fifty acres each for that purpose from Jesse Amason and William P. Wilson; 4) a major junction in the immediate area; and 5) a group of stores that the strategic junction had attracted. Less importantly, it has also been said that R. L. Parker owned some land very near, and that may have had something to do with it.
According to Joe Louis Jones, docent of our historic courthouse, the stake for the center of the county was actually driven at the high point very near our present post office. That particular rise is a bit higher than the one where the historic courthouse now sits; some of the reasons already given may have been why that choice was simply a passing thought.
Especially important was that the site chosen embraced a strategic location: at the junction of two active wagon trails—the route between the earlier towns of Buena Vista and Shelbyville, and the trail that led to Nacogdoches from Logan's Ferry. By 1866 these well-traveled trails were being used as postal roads, and also by then, merchants had been attracted by the junction to locate small stores there.
If we had assumed there were no group of stores or houses to cause Weaver and Parker to choose the particular plot of land now known as Center's historic square, we might have concluded they were simply attempting to identify the center of the county in order to start "fresh" with a new county seat. J.B. Sanders, however, states that there were stores there prior to Sam Weaver's survey.
"In 1869 there were only a blacksmith shop, the E. T. Smith Hotel, a log schoolhouse, and J. N. Weaver's Furniture Factory.” (J. B. Sanders: Students Who Have Attended the Center, Texas Public Schools, 1897 -1965). Also, Patricia R. McCoy in Shelby County Sampler suggests there may have been a few "shacks" used as stores around the area of the square even before the records were moved.
To further support the opinion that a few stores were in the area of the square even before it was laid out by Weaver, a 1900 photo of the north side of the square gives a subtle hint of that possibility. In it, the two stores on the left end are "free standing" and are reminiscent of 19th century architecture. They seem to have been built earlier than the row of attached storefronts continuing to the right.
And by the way, the assumption by some 20th-century writers that Center was first known as “White Cottage” was obviously based on the simultaneous closing of the White Cottage post office in favor of opening a new one in Center. This assumption is erroneous, since it was determined, even by 19th-century historians, that the White Cottage post office was in the area we now know as Newbern.
