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KARNACK,
TEXASHarrison County,
East Texas
FM 134 and FM 449 Near Caddo Lake
5 miles S of Uncertain
16 miles NE of Marshall
Population: Est. 775 (2000)
Lady
Bird Johnson's childhood home -
Southwest of Karnack (2½ miles) on Highway
43
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History
in a Pecan Shell
The exotic name is said to have derived from a comparison
of distances. Karnack's distance from Port Caddo (Republic of Texas port of entry)
was said to be exactly the same as the distance between the Egyptian cities of
Karnak and Thebes.
In the late 1890s the community was becoming known
for shipping cotton. A Karnack post office
opened in 1898 and oilfields around Caddo Lake began producing eight years later.
Karnack's population in 1915 was 100 (no figures available on the population
of Karnack, Egypt). A general store, gristmill and cotton gin were in operation
at that time.
By 1927 the population had quadrupled to 400 and peaked
at 850 in the early 1940s. |
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Karnack
Area Hotels:
Marshall
Hotels
Lady
Bird Johnson's Childhood Home -
Southwest of Karnack (2½ miles) on Highway
43
Oonie Andrews, the ghost who lives in Lady Bird Johnson's family
home at Karnack
She is as much a part of the old mansion that Jett
Jones, who grew up with Oonie, simply considers her "a lady who lives in the house
that nobody else can see."
In 1843, Milt Andrews built a splendid plantation-style
mansion near Karnack. Sometime in the l880s, Andrews' 19-year-old daughter, Eunice,
sat alone in an upstairs bedroom when bolt of lightning from a stormstruck the
chimney, raced down a fireplace, and hit Oonie. She was burned to death.
Over the years, stories arose that the ghost of Miss Andrews never left the
bedroom. Eerie noises, odd happenings, and ghostly apparitions soon became common.
When the Andrews family sold the house to T.J. Taylor -- Lady Bird Johnson's father
-- in 1902, the ghost went along with the sale. While Lady Bird said she never
saw or heard the ghost, she admitted feeling a sense of apprehension and unease
in the house as a child. - From Ghosts
in East Texas by Bob Bowman
Uncertain,
Texas, Caddo Lake and Cypress Trees by N. Ray Maxie
Just a
mile or more east of Jefferson in far northeast Texas and only a stones throw
north of Karnack, is the great mysterious Caddo Lake... more |
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