Carthage Keeps a Texas Country Music Story

Carthage carries its own country-music story. The Tex Ritter Museum opened here in October 1992. Tommie Ritter Smith helped bring it to life. She was a Ritter cousin and led the Panola County Chamber of Commerce. The museum began in the Hawthorn-Clabaugh-Patterson House. Later, the city built a 13,000-square-foot home for the larger project.

The Texas Country Music Hall of Fame joined the museum in 1997. It began honoring Texas country-music figures in 1998. That year's group included Cindy Walker, Tex Ritter, Willie Nelson, Jim Reeves, and Gene Autry. The hall keeps a Disc Jockey Hall of Fame, artist plaques, and memorabilia, so the place feels like a working memory room rather than a simple display case.

The Panola County tie is personal. Tex Ritter and Jim Reeves both came from the county, and the Carthage museum puts their names beside a wider Texas music cast. That gives the square-and-courthouse town another identity marker: oil and gas are part of the county story, but so are voices, stage names, movie marquees, and songs.