In Longview, the railway that gave birth to a town also gave an important boost to one of the most important pillars in the city’s history — the churches that formed in the town’s early years and continue to call downtown home.
The Catholic Parish of Longview was established in 1880; from that mission parish has sprung the St. Anthony’s Catholic parish that Longview knows today.
Flamboyant but frank. A super salesman who used his talents to sell his city on progress.
In the first official census in 1880, the city of Longview’s population was 1,525. As of 2018, it’s an estimated 81,424.
Longview was incorporated on May 17, 1871, the first community in Gregg County to do so. Here’s a look at the city’s mayors since that year.
The press has pushed Longview for progress since its first newspaper, the Longview News, a thrice-weekly with type that was handset by future Gov. James Stephen Hogg began circulating in 1871.
Gregg County was in mourning on Feb. 10, 1897. Word was spreading that the man who had created and named the county two decades earlier was dead at the age of 66.
Longview’s first mayor, Moses Kaufman Jr., was one of the 17 charter members who founded Masonic Lodge 404 shortly after the city was chartered.
Longview’s fourth mayor, Charles Whitney Booth, was one of the directors of the International & Great Northern Railroad’s offices here for 20 years.
Longview is not only the oldest town in Gregg County. It is three years older than the county itself. It became a townsite in 1870 and was incorporated in 1871.