A History: Hughes Springs, TX USA
Founded by Reece Hughes (1811-1893), who settled in Texas, 1839. In 1841 he married Elizabeth Rose, daughter of patriot Wm. Pinckney Rose. Her dowry enabled him to start a great plantation. After her death in 1853, he wed her sister, Mrs. J. w. Scott. In 1847 Reece Hughes founded the town of Hughes Springs at a famous chalybeate (iron salt-bearing) spring. It prospered for some years, becoming the site of a large boarding school and a favored place for church camp meetings, but later it declined. In 1878, Hughes' descendants founded present Hughes Springs.
Historical Marker - Spring Park, 3rd St.
Chalybeate Springs
(Pronounced "KA LIB E ATE)
Discovered in 1839 by brothers Reece and Robert Hughes (from Alabama) while looking for pirate gold. Springs derive name from iron salts in water. In 1847 Reece Hughes (1811-1893), wealthy planter who later built iron foundry, started the first town of Hughes Springs here.
Historical Marker - Spring Park, 3rd St.
Trammell's Trace
Entered Cass County at Epperson's Ferry. Continued south and west in an arc, passing through Chalybeate Springs (Hughes Springs). This 1813 pioneer trail originated in St. Louis and linked the "Southwest Trail" with the King's Highway to Mexico. It was laid out by Nicholas Trammell (1780-1852).
Hughes Springs and Trammell’s Treasure
by Mike Cox
"Texas Tales" Column
More than 300 miles inland from the Gulf of Mexico, the community of Hughes Springs owes its existence to a fanciful pirate story and one man who believed it.
Born in Tennessee and raised in Alabama, Reece Hughes first saw Texas in 1829 when he crossed the Sabine to hunt buffalo. The expedition proved short-lived.
“This little band of adventurers was soon driven out of Texas by a much larger force of hostile Indians,” son Howell Rose Hughes wrote a century later.
Nine years later after his first visit, Texas having wrested its independence from Mexico, Reece Hughes returned with his younger brother. They settled in Red River County, but an intriguing tale Hughes had heard on his first trip to Texas lured him to what is now Cass County.
As his son remembered it, “an old sea pirate who bore the name of Trammel” had buried “a great strong box of gold coins” near an Indian village on the trail that later bore his name – the Trammell Trace. Others gilded the legend, claiming Trammel had once been a member of Jean Laffite’s not-always-jolly band of saltwater brigands. After Laffite got run off Galveston Island by the U.S. Navy, the tale continued, Trammel decamped for St. Louis with his share of the loot. Hounded by hostile Indians while on the way to Missouri, he buried his treasure in Northeast Texas.
Hughes and his brother set out to find Trammell’s treasure, following the trail to an old Indian village along a mineral rich spring-feed creek in a handsome valley about a mile east of present Hughes Springs. On March 28, 1839 they pitched a tent and started chopping trees for a log cabin about a mile from the spring.
“If they ever found the golden treasure for which they were searching I have no record of it,” Hughes’ son wrote. “But they built their log cabin, cleared their little farm, and planted a crop of corn and peas and some garden truck.”
That fall, convinced that in putting down roots in Texas he had found another kind of treasure, Hughes left his brother in charge of their farm and rode back to Alabama to bring his father and other family members to Texas. As his son later remembered, others “seized with the Texas fever” joined the party and soon all “began to prosper wonderfully.”