Peter Whetstone

Photo: Drawing, Death of Peter Whetstone by M. B. Cole.

Peter Whetstone, founder of Marshall, Texas, was born in Indiana in 1790, the son of David and Rebecca (Hull) Whetstone. He married Dicey Webster in Arkansas on November 15, 1816, and the couple had six children. Apparently Whetstone was unable to read or write and was at best a “rough character.” There is a record of his being sentenced in 1823 to twenty-five lashes on his bare back for horse-stealing in Arkansas. And on September 5, 1830, Stephen F. Austin signed an order removing him and several other “bad men” from Texas. Nevertheless, Whetstone served in the Texas army, and obtained a grant in Harrison County, Texas, on February 12, 1838, under a first-class certificate, a fact that signified he was a married man and a resident of Texas at the time of the signing of the Texas Declaration of Independence. He received 320 acres of land in Wood County for his military service during the Texas Revolution and purchased an additional 640 acres of property in Upshur County.

In 1841, as an inducement to the commissioners who were to locate a site for the county seat of Harrison County, Whetstone offered land for a church, courthouse, masonic temple, and girls’ school, as well as 190 city lots for Marshall. According to legend, added inducements from a jug of whiskey that he had hidden at the proposed spot. The offer was accepted, and Whetstone's friend, Isaac Van Zandt, reportedly named the town and its streets.

Soon, Whetstone was drawn into the Regulator-Moderator War as a Moderator, and was killed on November 13, 1843, by Colonel Oliver T. Boulware outside a store on the Marshall town square. An obituary described Whetstone as "a noted freebooter who for many years has been an object of terror and hatred on the eastern frontier of Texas." It claimed that he had murdered at least twenty people, and it stated that his death occurred at his house, twenty miles from Shreveport. His widow, Dicey, was appointed administrator of his estate, which was settled some years later.

Whetstone's grave is unmarked, but tradition locates it on Southwest Road, near his home site west of Marshall.