The 11th Texas Infantry was stationed three miles east of Tyler, Texas, at Camp Clough, from early summer 1862 through September 17, 1862. General Henry McCulloch had made Tyler his headquarters as he assembled his troops prior to marching them toward Little Rock. Roberts and the 11th Texas Infantry were at Camp Clough. Hubbard and the 22nd Texas Infantry were at Camp Ford. Young and the Twelfth Texas Infantry were two miles east of Camp Ford near Ray's Creek. Speight and the Fifteenth Texas Infantry were twelve miles NW of Tyler, and there was another camp near Starrville. During that summer Smith County women worked on making tents, knapsacks, haversacks, and clothing. Excess garden vegetables were collected at George Yarbrough's store to be sent to the soldiers. A post hospital opened at the old Planters Hotel in downtown Tyler, and for a while the Methodist Church was used for the overflow. The local newspaper appealed to the women of the county to supply hospital materials and to visit the sick. The Christian Church became a center for sewing. It is believed that the bulk of the soldiers (unknowns) buried under the Confederate monument at Oakwood Cemetery in Tyler may have come from the hospitals in town that summer.

There were no railroads in Smith County prior to the 1870s. The closest would be a small stretch of the Texas Western Railroad between Marshall and Swanson's Landing on Caddo Lake, with part of that taken up during the war and relaid to connect at Waskom with the Vicksburg, Shreveport, and Texas Railroad.

Vicki Betts