Camp Joseph E. Johnston — The Childress County, Texas Confederate Veterans Organization

Camp Joseph E. Johnston was a Confederate veterans organization formed in Childress County, Texas, not a wartime military installation — an important distinction, since the name is sometimes confused with other camps and forts that carried the Johnston name elsewhere in Texas history.

The first meeting of Confederate veterans residing in Childress County was held at the county courthouse on Saturday, June 4, 1892, specifically to organize this camp. Attendees chose to name it in honor of Joseph E. Johnston, the Confederate general. Like similar veterans camps across the postwar South, it functioned as a fraternal and commemorative organization, giving former Confederate soldiers who had settled in the county — decades after the war itself — a formal way to gather, support one another, and preserve their wartime service records.

This record complements the county's broader Confederate veterans page elsewhere in this section, which covers the individuals themselves; this page focuses on the organization they formed once settled in Childress County.