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When Jeremiah and Harriet Johnson left Mississippi, they went to Houston County, Texas. According to Pauline Mitchell Pierce's research, he served as pastor of the Baptist churches at Lone Star and Augusta 1877-79, Augusta 1880-1882, Crockett 1883 - 1885, Augusta 1885-1888, Crockett 1888, Grapeland 1889-91, Belott 1892-93, and Groveton in Trinity County 1894-1899. The 1880 Census shows him to be in Precinct 2, which was located northeast of Crockett in the Belott area.I've included the histories of each of these places from the Handbook of Texas , published online by the University of Texas. This will give us a more complete picture of where he was and how these places developed.
AUGUSTA, TEXAS. Augusta is on Farm Road 227 sixteen miles northeast of Crockett in northeastern Houston County. The town was reportedly named for Augusta Smith, daughter of a pioneer settler. Daniel McLean, a member of the Gutiérrez-Magee expedition, established what is thought to be the first home there in 1821. Other early settlers included the Kyle and Aldrich families, Col. W. W. Davis, and G. W. Wilson, on whose headright the townsite was located. Before the Civil War Augusta was a trading point for plantations in the area. W. M. Waddell taught at Augusta Male and Female Academy in 1860. An Augusta post office was established in 1882, and by 1885 the town had a Union church, a district school, steam cotton gins, grist and corn mills, three general stores, and a population of 200. The post office was later discontinued, but the community continued to prosper until the 1940s. As late as 1936 Augusta reported 250 residents and three businesses. In the 1940s, however, the population fell to 120, and by 1952 it had dwindled to twenty. It was still reported as twenty in 1990, when a community center and cemetery remained.
Claudia Hazlewood
Recommended citation:
- "AUGUSTA, TX." The Handbook of Texas Online. <> [Accessed Wed Aug 29 15:48:07 US/Central 2001 ].
BELOTT, TEXAS. Belott, a farming community on Farm Road 1733 twelve miles northeast of Crockett in east central Houston County, was probably established around the time of the Civil War. It was named for Andrew J. Belott, a prominent early settler buried in nearby New Energy Cemetery. A local school was built in the 1870s, and a post office operated in the community from 1890 to 1908. In the mid-1930s the settlement had a church, a school, four stores, and an estimated population of fifty. The school was consolidated with that of Glover in 1936; in 1968 the Glover school became part of the Kennard school district. After World War II many residents moved away, and by the mid-1960s only a church and a single store remained; the estimated population in 1965 was twenty. In the early 1990s Belott was a dispersed rural community.
bibliography: Houston County Historical Commission, History of Houston County, Texas, 1687-1979 (Tulsa, Oklahoma: Heritage, 1979).
CROCKETT, TEXAS. Crockett, the county seat and largest community in Houston County, is at the junction of U.S. Highway 287 and State highways 7, 19, and 21 in the central part of the county. When Houston County was established in 1837, Andrew Edwards Gossett, an early settler from Tennessee, donated land for the county seat. Gossett and his father, Elijah Gossett, named the settlement for David Crockett, a former neighbor in Tennessee. Crockett is said to have camped near the townsite in January 1836 on his way to San Antonio. County officials chose the site because of its proximity to the Old San Antonio Road. The town was incorporated on December 29, 1837, and a post office opened there on March 31, 1838. During the early years mail was delivered twice a month, and a stagecoach ran at intervals from Nacogdoches. In 1839 raids by the Alabama-Coushatta and Cherokee Indians forced the town's residents to take shelter in the fortified log courthouse. Several early schools operated in the vicinity of Crockett, among them Crockett Academy, built a half mile east of the courthouse about 1855. Several early newspapers were published in the town, including the Crockett Printer, begun in 1853 by Oscar Dalton, and the Crockett Argus, first published in 1857.
During the Civil War Crockett served as a mustering point and training center for Confederate forces. In 1865 the courthouse and most of the town burned, so that most of the county's early records were lost. In 1872 the Houston and Great Northern Railroad was built through Crockett, thus assuring its place as a regional trading center and spurring the growth of the lumber industry in the region. By 1885 the town had a bank, a hotel, an opera house, and several schools; Baptist, Methodist, and Presbyterian churches; a weekly newspaper, the Texas Patron; and an estimated population of 1,200. A school for black girls, later known as Mary Allen Junior College, opened in Crockett in 1886. In 1904 a lignite mine was opened just south of the town and at its height around 1910 produced twenty-five carloads a day. Wildcatting for oil began around the same time, but local oil was not produced commercially until 1934. Although the decline of the timber industry after World War II affected the economy of county, Crockett continued to prosper during the 1920s and 1930s, reaching a population of 3,063 in 1925 and 4,441 in 1936, when it had twenty-one businesses.
After World War II Crockett grew steadily; it topped the 5,000 mark in the early 1960s and reached 7,000 during the 1980s. In 1990 the town had a population of 7,024 and 180 rated businesses. The local economy was based on agriculture and the production of furniture, plastics, chemicals, and clothing. Attractions in Crockett include its many old homes, a Fiddlers Festival in June, and a rodeo in July.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Armistead Albert Aldrich, The History of Houston County, Texas (San Antonio: Naylor, 1943). Houston County Historical Commission, History of Houston County, Texas, 1687-1979 (Tulsa, Oklahoma: Heritage, 1979). Houston County Cemeteries (Crockett, Texas: Houston County Historical Commission, 1977; 3d ed. 1987).
Eliza H. Bishop and Christopher Long
Recommended citation:
- "CROCKETT, TX." The Handbook of Texas Online. <> [Accessed Wed Aug 29 15:52:26 US/Central 2001 ].
GRAPELAND, TEXAS. Grapeland is at the intersection of U.S. Highway 287 and Farm Road 227, twelve miles north of Crockett in northern Houston County. In the early decades of Houston County the Grapeland area was a crossroads on the route from Crockett to Palestine. The home of an early resident near the intersection served as a mail drop for settlers in the area. The original settlement took the name of Grapevine from the wild fruit that flourished in the region's sandy soil. The name was changed to Grapeland in 1873, when application was made for a post office. In 1872 the Houston and Great Northern Railroad Company completed its line through the area and turned over a 640-acre tract to the New York and Texas Land Company for development as a townsite. The community grew quickly as a railroad depot and commercial center for local cotton producers. By the first decade of the twentieth century Grapeland had five general stores, two cotton gins, several mills, a hotel, a newspaper, and various other enterprises. In these years the town's population exceeded 400. A fire razed fifteen businesses in downtown Grapeland in 1913, but the town promptly rebuilt in brick. It has been incorporated since 1924. Cotton production and ranching were the basis of initial growth in the community, and forestry is important in the local economy. The population approached 1,200 in the 1920s and remained near that figure through the 1960s. Cotton declined in importance to the area economy and after World War II peanuts replaced it as the primary agricultural product. After 1936 oil and gas production became another important source of income for the town. Local manufactures include a steel fabrication plant. Growth in the 1970s and early 1980s resulted in a population increase of more than 35 percent; in 1990 the population stood at 1,450. Since 1945 Grapeland has celebrated an annual Peanut Festival. A fiddler's contest that was part of the original "Goober Carnivals" has become the Labor Day Bluegrass Festival. Grapeland is known locally as the "queen city of the sand flats."
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Ayer Directory of Publications, 1976. Directory of Texas Manufactures, 1976. Grapeland Messenger, Crossroads to Progress: Grapeland, The Queen City of the Sand Flats (1972). Houston County Historical Commission, History of Houston County, Texas, 1687-1979 (Tulsa, Oklahoma: Heritage, 1979).
Calvin S. Story
Recommended citation:
- "GRAPELAND, TX." The Handbook of Texas Online. <> [Accessed Wed Aug 29 15:55:21 US/Central 2001 ].
HOUSTON COUNTY. Houston County (H-20), the first county established by the Republic of Texas, is east of Waco in the East Texas Timberlands region. It is bordered on the north by Anderson County, on the east by Cherokee, Angelina, and Trinity counties, on the south by Walker and Madison counties, and on the west by Leon County. Its center lies at 31°20' north latitude and 99°25' west longitude. Crockett is the county seat and largest town. In addition to U.S. Highway 287 the county's transportation needs are served by State highways 7, 19, and 21 and the Union Pacific Railroad. Houston County covers 1,234 square miles, with elevations ranging from 200 to 300 feet. The Neches River forms the northeastern boundary of the county, and the Trinity River is the western boundary. The terrain is gently rolling to hilly. Soils are generally light colored and loamy, with very deep reddish clayey subsoils. In the southwest and west the soils are sandy with clayey subsoils. The predominant vegetation is mixed pine and hardwood forests. Between 21 and 30 percent of the land in the county is considered prime farmland. The climate is subtropical and humid, with cool winters and hot summers. Temperatures range in January from an average low of 36° F to an average high of 58°, and in July from 71° to 94°. The average annual rainfall is 42 inches. The average annual snowfall is less than one inch. The growing season averages 260 days a year, with the last freeze in early March and the first in late November.
The area has been the site of human habitation for several thousand years. Archeological artifacts recovered in the region suggest that the earliest human inhabitants arrived during the Archaic Period, approximately 2,000 to 3,000 years ago. Evidence of the prehistoric Caddo culture that flourished between A.D. 1000 and 1600 has also been found in the area; the earliest Spanish explorers encountered the remnants of that culture during their first forays into the region. The area now known as Houston County was also a stronghold of the Alabama-Coushatta, Cherokee, and Tejas Indians. The first recorded European exploration there was carried out by René Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, and it is believed that a remnant of the Moscoso expeditionqv reached the vicinity. On Alonso De León'sqv second expedition in 1690 the first East Texas mission, San Francisco de los Tejas, was founded in the neighborhood of the present Weches, in the northeastern part of the county. The mission was abandoned in 1693 because of Indian hostility. The Old San Antonio Road, the most important of several caminos reales in the future state of Texas, crossed the county, and travel and trade were carried on over this route for a hundred years before any permanent settlements were made. A village on the right bank of the Trinity, established in 1774 and named Bucareli, reached the size of forty-two houses and a population of 348 before it broke up and the residents moved to Nacogdoches under the leadership of Antonio Gil Ibarvo.
The earliest permanent settlers in the future county were Daniel McLean, who crossed the area with the Gutiérrez-Magee expedition, and his brother-in-law John Sheridan; they settled near the site of present-day Augusta around 1821. Land grants in the area were made by the Mexican government as early as 1828 to members of Joseph Vehlein'sqv colony. Among the first to receive them were Jacob Masters, who settled ten miles northeast of the site of present Crockett in 1828. Other early settlers included Masters's son Jacob Masters, Jr., Elijah Gossett and his three sons, and Joseph Redmond Rice, who started a plantation on the Old San Antonio Road about five miles northeast of Crockett.
In 1837 the boundaries of Houston County were laid out and its government was organized. It was named for President Sam Houston, who signed the order establishing the county on June 12, 1837. Upon its formation from Nacogdoches County in 1837, Houston County included the territory that later became Trinity and Anderson counties and part of Henderson County. Land was donated for the county seat by Andrew E. Gossett, who named it for his father's friend and former Tennessee neighbor, David Crockett. Collin Aldrich was first chief justice; George Aldrich, county surveyor; James Madden, sheriff; and Stephen White, clerk of the district court.
During the early years of the county's existence, there were frequent hostile encounters between settlers and Indians. In October 1838 an Indian band attacked the home of John Edens on San Pedro Creek, where a number of women and children had taken refuge while the men of the area were away combatting the Córdova Rebellion. In what became known as the Edens-Madden massacre, more than a half dozen people were killed and a number of others were wounded. Many early families constructed forts or blockhouses for protection, but sporadic attacks continued until the early 1850s.
During the early 1840s the population of the county grew rapidly. In 1847 the number of residents reached 1,929, and by 1850 it stood at 2,721. Many of the early settlers were planters from the Old South who brought their slaves with them, and the early tax rolls of the county show that the number of bondsmen increased steadily during the decade, rising from 308 in 1840 to 545 in 1850. Much of the early settlement was along the Neches and Trinity rivers. Linking the two rivers was the Old San Antonio Road, which provided the main overland route to and through the county. Farming in Houston County was originally conducted on a subsistence basis, but by the late 1840s a thriving plantation economy, based primarily on cotton, had developed. In 1850, Houston County plantations produced 740 bales, and the figure grew rapidly over the next decade. During the 1850s Alabama and Hall's Bluff, both on the Trinity River, became important shipping sites for the county's cotton crop. Planters hauled the heavy bales overland to the river and then transported them by flatboat to Galveston for sale and export to New Orleans and other sites.
In 1860, on the eve of the Civil War, Houston County had a population of 8,058, including 2,819 slaves. Despite the rapid population growth of the previous decade and a half, the area remained sparsely settled. Arable land amounted to less than 40,000 acres, and Crockett was the only sizable town. Alabama, Augusta, Randolph, Hall's Bluff, and several other sites had post offices, but most of these communities were little more than villages.
The Civil War and its aftermath brought profound changes to the county. Its citizens voted overwhelmingly for secession, 552 for and only 38 against, and county men volunteered for the Confederate Army in large numbers. Despite having a white population of little more than 5,000, the county provided nearly 1,000 men to the war effort. Many of these spent long periods away from home during the war, and those who remained behind were forced to deal with the lack of markets and wild fluctuations in the value of Confederate currency, as well as concern for their relatives and friends on the battlefield. The end of the war brought wrenching changes in the county's economy. For many Houston County residents, the abolition of slavery meant devastating economic loss. Before the war slaves had constituted nearly half of all taxable property in the county, and their loss, coupled with a sharp decline in property values, caused a profound disruption for most planters. The value of farms in the county dropped from $1,154,435 in 1860 to $57,180 in 1870.
The black population fared no better. Many black farmers left the farms owned by their former masters to seek better working and living conditions, but for the vast majority the change brought only marginal improvement. Most ended up working on the land on shares, receiving one-third or one-half of the crop for their labors. Politically, however, Houston County blacks fared somewhat better than freedmen in other counties; as late as 1873, largely as a result of black voters, Republican gubernatorial candidate Edmund J. Davis won a narrow majority of the county's votes. As was the case elsewhere in the state, however, the introduction of the white primary and other discriminatory voting practices eventually served effectively to disfranchise African Americans until the 1960s.
Although Houston County witnessed little of the violence that many other counties experienced during Reconstruction, the effects of the war were felt for some time, and the economy did not begin fully to recover until 1872, when the Houston and Great Northern Railroad was built through the county. The new railroad provided improved access to markets outside of Texas and brought in large numbers of new settlers, who helped to reinvigorate the county. Between 1870 and 1880 the population grew from 8,147 to 16,702. Many of the new residents settled along the tracks, where numerous new communities, among them Grapeland, Latexo, and Lovelady, were built. The influx of new settlers had a dramatic impact on the agricultural economy. Between 1870 and 1880 the number of farms in the county increased from seventy-five to 1,698, and the number of improved acres grew from 6,746 to 73,884. Corn, cotton, and cattle were the leading products. In 1880 the county's farmers produced 283,402 bushels of corn and 9,730 bales of cotton; the agricultural census counted 14,368 cattle. The construction of the railroad also stimulated interested in lumbering the large virgin pine forests in the eastern part of the county, and by the 1890s several sawmills were in operation. In 1902 the Eastern Texas Railroad built from Lufkin to Kennard, in southeastern Houston County, further stimulating the lumber industry. The largest mill, the Four C Mill, was established in the Ratcliff area in 1901. It operated until the 1920s, by which time more than 120,000 acres of timberland had been cut.
In 1904 commercial lignite mining was also introduced. But the mainstay of the economy during the early decades of the twentieth century remained agriculture, particularly cotton farming. Between 1900 and 1930 the amount of land given to cotton culture steadily increased, rising from some 40,000 acres to more than 130,000 acres. In 1926, one of the peak years of the cotton boom, Houston County farmers produced 48,461 bales, placing the county among the leaders in the state. In addition to cotton, farmers also produced significant quantities of corn, butter, milk, eggs, and peaches.
The county population grew gradually from 25,452 in 1900 to 30,017 in 1930. The number of farms increased during the same period from 4,181 to 5,656. During the late 1920s and early 1930s cotton remained the leading cash crop, but droughts, boll weevil infestations, and falling prices combined to drive down production in the 1930s. Although the amount of land planted in cotton continued to be quite high, both yields and profits dropped significantly, especially after 1929. In 1930 Houston County farmers produced only 27,960 bales, down nearly a third from the peak production figure of the mid-1920s, despite the fact that the amount of land devoted to cotton continued to grow. By 1930 nearly half of the cropland in the county-143,131 of 221,141 acres-was planted in cotton.
Because of the growing population, land prices showed a marked increase, and many new farmers found it impossible to buy land. Accordingly, the number of tenants and sharecroppers grew rapidly, particularly in the 1920s, and by 1930 more than half of all farmers in the county-3,851 of 5,656-were working someone else's land. As a result of the poor yields and the reluctance of banks to extend credit to financially strained farmers, many of those who made a living from the land, particularly tenants, found themselves in a precarious position. Numerous farmers were forced to give up their livelihood and seek work elsewhere. As a result the number of tenants dropped sharply, from 3,851 in 1930 to 2,236 in 1940, and the number of farms in the county fell from 5,656 to 4,103. Many of the small tenant farmers were black, and they were particularly hard hit during the Great Depression of the 1930s. Public Works Administration funds helped some in need; among the leading federal projects was the construction of a new county courthouse, which is still in use. Oil, discovered in the county in 1934, enabled some cash-strapped farmers to settle long-standing debts. But the economy did not begin to rebound until the early 1940s, when commodity prices began to climb again.
Since World War II Houston County has been a regional leader in agricultural production. During the late 1940s and early 1950s the farming economy became increasingly diversified. Truck and fruit farming were introduced and greater emphasis was placed on the dairy industry and poultry production. Bruce plums were also grown in large quantities around Grapeland. In the early postwar years cotton was still being grown in large amounts, with some 15,000 bales reported in 1951, but as the decade wore on, peanuts, corn, sorghum, tomatoes, beans, and other crops gradually grew in importance.
During the 1960s stock farming gradually replaced crop farming as the leading agricultural pursuit, and by the early 1980s, 86 percent of the county's farm income was from livestock and livestock products. In 1982, 55 percent of the land in the county was in farms and ranches, with 14 percent of the land under cultivation and 3 percent irrigated. Houston County ranked ninety-first of the 254 Texas counties in agricultural receipts. The primary crops were rye, hay, cotton, oats, wheat, sorghum, and peanuts; watermelons, peaches, and pecans were also grown in sizable quantities. The leading livestock products were cattle, milk, and hogs.
Businesses in the county in the early 1980s numbered 368. In 1980, 14 percent of workers were self-employed, 20 percent were employed in professional or related services, 19 percent in manufacturing, 18 percent in wholesale and retail trade, and 11 percent in agriculture, forestry, fishing, and mining; 11 percent were employed in other counties, and 2,641 workers were retired. Nonfarm earnings in 1981 totaled $183,021,000. Logging remained an important industry, and the county continued to produce lumber, chiefly pine and ash, in commercial quantities, as well as pulpwood. Though Houston County was once heavily deforested, the Civilian Conservation Corps replanted the area in the 1930s, and much of the eastern part of the county is now in Davy Crockett National Forest, which was established in 1935. Lignite coal, fuller's earth, and brick clay are also commercial extracted. Oil and natural gas also continue to be produced in sizable amounts. Oil production in 1990 was 809,916 barrels. Between 1934 and January 1, 1990, wells in Houston County pumped 45,429,762 barrels of crude.
The earliest schools in the county were established in the late 1830s. Trinity College, in Alabama, chartered in 1841, was the first college established in the Republic of Texas. In the early 1980s Houston County had five school districts, with six elementary, two middle, and five high schools. The average daily attendance in 1981-82 was 3,428, with expenditures per pupil of $2,681. Fifty percent of the 211 high school graduates planned to attend college. In 1983, 55 percent of the school graduates were white, 41 percent black, 1 percent Hispanic, 0.3 percent Asian, and 0.1 percent American Indian. The first churches were established shortly after the organization of the county. In the mid-1980s the county had seventy churches, with an estimated combined membership of 10,833. The largest denominations were Baptist and Methodist. Houston County has generally been staunchly Democratic, although Republican presidential candidates won the 1984 and 1988 elections. In the 1982 primary 98 percent voted Democratic and 2 percent Republican, with a total of 4,367 votes cast. Democratic officials continued to maintain control of county offices, although in 1995 there was a Republican county judge for the first time in 100 years.
The population of Houston County fell steadily in the years after World War II, as residents moved away to find jobs. It hit an all-time high of 31,137 in 1940, but dropped to 22,825 in 1950, 19,376 in 1960, and 17,855 in 1970. Subsequently the number of residents grew modestly, rising to 22,299 in 1980, though it fell slightly, to 21,375, in 1990. In 1990 more than a third of the population (7,024) lived in Crockett. Other communities included Grapeland, Kennard, Latexo, and Lovelady. In 1990, 67.2 percent of the population was white, 29.6 percent black, 0.1 percent American Indian, and 0.2 percent Asian. The largest ancestry groups were English, Irish, and African American.
Tourism became an increasingly important industry in the late twentieth century. Some 200 Texas Historical Commission markers identified historical sites and events. Leading attractions in the county include the site of San Francisco de los Tejas Mission, Davy Crockett National Forest, a visitor's center and museum in the 1909 Crockett Depot, Houston County Lake, and Lake Ratcliff. The area also offers numerous possibilities for fishing, swimming, hiking, and other outdoor activities.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Armistead Albert Aldrich, The History of Houston County, Texas (San Antonio: Naylor, 1943). Frontier Times, May 1929. Houston County Historical Commission, History of Houston County, Texas, 1687-1979 (Tulsa, Oklahoma: Heritage, 1979). Thomas Nelms Mainer, Houston County in the Civil War (Crockett, Texas: Houston County Historical Commission, 1981). Gifford E. White, The First Settlers of Houston County, Texas (Austin, 1983). Albert Woldert, "The Location of the Tejas Indian Village (San Pedro) and the Spanish Missions in Houston County," Southwestern Historical Quarterly 38 (January 1935).
Eliza H. Bishop
Recommended citation: "HOUSTON COUNTY." The Handbook of Texas Online. <> [Accessed Wed Aug 29 16:07:18 US/Central 2001 ].
In the 1922 letter to his daughter Mildred, my grandfather Charles Thomas Johnson says of Groveton, " so many of my old friends of childhood live there."We also know he was working at the lumbermill when co-workers Frost and Eckford Wilkins introduced him to their niece Florence Rebecca Wilkins.His grandfather Jeremiah F. Johnson pastored the Baptist Church there 1894-1899, and was buried in the Glenwood Cemetery in Groveton when he died.This is a sketch of the town's history.
GROVETON, TEXAS. Groveton, the county seat of Trinity County, is at the intersection of State Highway 94 and U.S. Highway 287, near the center of the county. The community was established in 1881, when the Trinity County and Sabine Pass Land and Railway Company built a lumber mill on the south side of its newly laid track and plotted a townsite on the north side. Company director William S. Peters proposed the name Grovetown because of a stand of blackjack trees between the mill and the town; residents almost immediately shortened it to Groveton. The first building was a shack that William Magee used as a saloon; Tom Wortham built the first residence.
A post office was granted in 1882, the same year that voters chose Groveton as the new county seat. The courthouse at Pennington had recently burned down, and Groveton had rail facilities and was closer to the center of the county. The Trinity Lumber Company, which was auctioning off town lots, offered to donate the site for a town square and materials for a new courthouse, which was built of brick in 1884.
Even though the mill was the town's only industry, Groveton and Milltown, or South Groveton, were organized as separate municipalities with different mayors. Groveton was incorporated in 1919. Because Trinity, unlike many other mills, made no provision for the social or other needs of its employees, the two communities combined to build churches and a school, and the company store was on the Groveton side of the tracks.
The closing of mills in other areas around 1900 brought a population influx to Groveton. It also brought a period of lawlessness that the locals combatted by outlawing saloons and the sale of liquor in 1900. Between 1909 and 1921, as the timber began to run out, most mills in the vicinity closed, and entire towns disappeared with them, but the Trinity mill, one of the largest in the South, was still open full-time in 1928. It finally closed at midnight on December 31, 1930. A two-hour mill whistle blast signalled the end of prosperity. Over the next three years the mill was dismantled, and local rail lines were abandoned. The town's population dropped from 4,000 to 1,046 between 1928 and 1931. In 1933 Groveton began reporting combined population figures with South Groveton.
In the 1930s the Civilian Conservation Corps began reforestation in the area, and the Work Projects Administration made possible much construction in Groveton, including a new county jail, Groveton High School, and a gymnasium. After a population low of 799 in 1952, Groveton reported 1,148 residents and forty-two businesses in 1961. In the 1980s Groveton was once again a lumbering center and had become a gateway to the recreation areas of the Davy Crockett National Forest. It was also a retail center for Trinity County, as well as a center for small manufacturing. In 1988 it had a population of 1,286 and twenty-seven businesses. In 1990 the population was 1,071.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Flora G. Bowles, A History of Trinity County, Texas, 1827 to 1928 (M.A. thesis, University of Texas, 1928; rpt., Groveton, Texas: Groveton Independent School District, 1966).
Patricia B. Hensley
Recommended citation:
- "GROVETON, TX." The Handbook of Texas Online. <> [Accessed Wed Aug 29 16:17:50 US/Central 2001 ].
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Knowing the history of the Baptist Church in Texas will help us to understand the conditions and environment in which our great great grandfather and several of his descendants, including my father, ministered. Again, from the Handbook of Texas:
BAPTIST CHURCH. Although the Catholic Church was the established religion of Texas until March 1834, by the summer of 1820 Joseph L. Bays, a North Carolinian Baptist reared in Kentucky and a friend of Moses Austin, was preaching regularly in Texas. He was arrested in 1823 and escaped en route to San Antonio to stand trial. About that same time Freeman Smalley, an Ohio Baptist minister, entered Texas and apparently preached at old Pecan Point, near the site of present Clarksville. In 1825 Thomas Hanks, a Tennessee parson, delivered the first Baptist sermon west of the Brazos River, near San Felipe. Thomas J. Pilgrim traveled from New York in 1828 and established the first Baptist Sunday school in Texas. Mexican officials suppressed the venture, but Pilgrim resumed his efforts and worked to propagate Baptist Sunday schools in Texas until his death in 1877.
The Mexican government gave Texas settlers religious freedom in 1834. The first Baptist church in Texas was organized in Illinois in July 1833 and moved to Texas as a body, called the Pilgrim Church of Predestinarian Regular Baptists, in January 1834. It was led by the antimissionary Daniel Parker. Providence Church, founded in March 1834 twelve miles south of Bastrop, was the first Baptist congregation actually formed in Texas. Under the leadership of Zachariah N. Morrell, a major figure among early Texas Baptists, another congregation emerged in November 1837 at Washington-on-the-Brazos. In May 1838 the Union, or Old North, Church was organized four miles north of Nacogdoches, and in 1839 the Plum Grove Church began just south of Bastrop.
A bitter controversy from the divergent views of Parker and Morrell plagued these early congregations. Parker, a "Primitive" or "Hardshell" Baptist, objected to organized mission societies, Sunday schools, Bible societies, and seminaries as both unscriptural and a threat to congregational independence. Morrell, by contrast, applauded the cooperative ventures of locally autonomous congregations. Though intensely aggressive in the 1830s and 1840s, antimissionary Baptists steadily lost ground to Morrell, whose heirs forged the Baptist General Convention of Texas in 1885, the largest Baptist body in Texas.
Texas Baptists have always been intensely evangelistic. Beginning in the 1840s they proselytized in the German communities of Central Texas. J. Frank Kiefer, a young German immigrant converted under the influence of Rufus C. Burleson, in turn made significant headway among the Germans in the 1860s.
Baptists educational and eleemosynary institutions have been important since the days of the Republic of Texas. William Milton Tryon and Robert E. B. Baylor convinced the republic to charter Baylor University at Independence on February 1, 1845. The university was consolidated with Waco University in 1885 and moved to Waco. By 1860 Baptists operated at least a dozen colleges, most of them for women and many of brief duration; by the turn of the twentieth century Baptist colleges were in operation in Waco, Brownwood, Abilene, Jacksboro, Decatur, Rusk, Greenville, Waller, and Belton. Baylor Theological Seminary was begun in Waco in 1905 and moved to Fort Worth in 1910 to become the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. It has since become the largest seminary in the world.
Robert Cooke Buckner opened the Buckner Orphans Home (see buckner baptist children's home) at Dallas with three children in December 1879. A century later the Buckner Baptist Benevolences operated major facilities in Dallas, Lubbock, Beaumont, Burnet, and San Antonio and provided an array of services, such as adoption, resident child and foster care, assistance for unwed mothers, in-home mother's aid, family counseling, and retirement and nursing care. Along with James B. Cranfill and George W. Truett, Buckner also encouraged Baptists to build a hospital in Dallas; it opened in March 1904. Baptists in Houston established another in September 1907. Baptists currently provide medical care in Dallas, Beaumont, San Antonio, Abilene, Amarillo, Waco, and Harlingen.
On such specific social issues as racial discrimination and prohibition, Baptists have generally mirrored their environment. Texas was a slave state, and most Texas Baptists supported slavery and justified secession. After the Civil War, white churchgoers were divided over whether to allow blacks in their congregations. In 1866, after a heated discussion, the Colorado Association voted to keep black members, convinced they would succumb to error without "the superior intelligence of the whites." While whites debated, however, blacks resolved the matter by withdrawing en masse from white-controlled congregations. The first black Baptist church in Texas was organized at Galveston in 1865 with Israel S. Campbell as pastor. The next year the state's first black Baptist association was formed. By 1890 black Baptists totaled 111,138 statewide, and in 1916, 72 percent of the state's black churchgoers were Baptists.
Baptists enthusiastically endorsed the Anti-Saloon League when it came to Texas in 1907. The league's presidents from 1907 to 1918 were prominent Baptist leaders: Benjamin F. Riley, 1907-09; Joel H. Gambrell, 1910-15; and Arthur J. Barton, 1915-18. Involvement in the prohibition crusade led to broader social awareness. In 1908 the Baptist General Convention of Texas concluded that the saloon was "so interlaced . . . into commerce, politics, society, and the . . . law" that the organization challenged Baptists to become politically active and socially alert. Texas Baptists, contrary to some opinion, took part in the social gospel movement of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In 1915 the BGCT formed the Social Service Committee, which directed attention to conflicts between labor and capital, disputes between landowners and tenant farmers, and the need of prison and child-welfare reforms. The principal advocate of applied Christianity in these early years was Joseph Martin Dawson, longtime pastor of the First Baptist Church in Waco.
Though distracted in the 1920s by John Franklyn Norris, the flamboyant fundamentalist (see fundamentalism) and pastor of the First Baptist Church in Fort Worth, socially concerned Baptists persevered, and in 1950 the BGCT formed the Christian Life Commission to attend to race relations, economic matters, family life, church and state relations, political involvement, and such public moral issues as alcoholism, gambling, and pornography. In 1961 the Mexican Baptist Convention of Texas and the BGCT were united.
When the Civil War began Baptists were a distant second to the Methodists. By 1906 the Baptist Church had become the largest church in Texas. In 1980 Baptists numbered approximately 4,500,000. The majority were Southern Baptists affiliated with the BGCT, whose membership totalled 2,600,000. The rest were divided among the American Baptist Association, American Baptist Churches of the U.S.A., the Baptist Missionary Association, the North American Baptist Conference, the Seventh Day Baptist General Conference, and various black conventions. In 1994, despite an ongoing intramural struggle between fundamentalists and progressivists, Baptists continued their numerical lead in the state.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Robert A. Baker, The Blossoming DesertA Concise History of Texas Baptists (Waco: Word, 1970). James Milton Carroll, A History of Texas Baptists (Dallas: Baptist Standard, 1923). Zane Allen Mason, Frontiersmen of Faith: A History of Baptist Pioneer Work in Texas, 1865-1885 (San Antonio: Naylor, 1970). John W. Storey, Texas Baptist Leadership and Social Christianity, 1900-1980 (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1986).
John W. Storey
Recommended citation:
- "BAPTIST CHURCH." The Handbook of Texas Online. <> [Accessed Wed Aug 29 21:13:00 US/Central 2001 ].