Andrew Hayter
Arlington, Tarrant County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Reverend Andrew Shannon Hayter (1818-1900) was one of the earliest settlers in this area, and is considered by many to be the "Father of Arlington." A native of Tennessee, Hayter left Alabama with his family in late 1850 and arrived in Texas shortly after, settling first in Nacogdoches. Over the next forty-nine years Hayter would establish or serve sixteen Cumberland Presbyterian churches. As with many pioneer preachers, Hayter worked in another procession, as a surveyor, to augment his income. The Hayters moved to Tarrant County in 1869, where Andrew quickly made a name for himself as a preacher, civic leader and surveyor. During the early 1870s a tiny settlement developed on the edge of Hayter's property, and he petitioned for a post office in 1875. The post office was called Haytersville. Hayter had already founded two churches, a school, and a Masonic Lodge in the area when he was asked in 1876 to locate the railroad through eastern Tarrant County and lay out a tiny, half-mile-square settlement between Dallas and Fort Worth. The railroad designers needed in-depth knowledge of the area and its terrain, as well as a plentiful source of timber to construct the road bed. Andrew Hayter could supply the necessary surveying knowledge, and also owned property filled with large timbers that could be furnished to the railroad. When the railroad offered to name their new town Hayter, the reverend declined the offer and instead gave the town the name Arlington, after Robert E. Lee's Virginia estate. The birth of Arlington caused the demise of tiny Hayterville. The post office was soon moved to the new town and Hayterville was abandoned. (2009)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
A Tennessee-born Cumberland Presbyterian preacher, Andrew Shannon Hayter came to Texas around 1850 and eventually settled in Tarrant County, where he founded churches, a school and a Masonic lodge and earned his living as a surveyor. His frontier knowledge made him the natural choice in 1876 to help route the railroad and lay out a small town between Dallas and Fort Worth. Offered the honor of naming it for himself, he instead chose 'Arlington,' after Robert E. Lee's Virginia estate.
Why it matters
Remembered as the 'Father of Arlington,' Hayter shows how a single surveyor-preacher could conjure a town from open country as the railroads reshaped North Texas.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
North Texas in the years after the Civil War was open, thinly settled country waiting for the one thing that would change everything: the railroad. Through the late 1860s and 1870s, rail lines pushed west across the state, and wherever the track went, towns were born — and wherever it bypassed, settlements withered and died.
This was the age of the pioneer preacher, a figure who rode enormous circuits to plant churches in raw country, and who very often earned his bread by a second trade because a frontier congregation could not support him. Surveying was a natural fit: the same man who knew the terrain well enough to save souls across it could also measure it, map it, and lay out the roads and townsites that civilization required.
Into this moment stepped a Tennessee-born minister who would put his surveying eye, his timber, and his good name to work at the exact hinge where a railroad decided where a city would stand.
People & events
Reverend Andrew Shannon Hayter (1818–1900) was a native of Tennessee who left Alabama with his family in late 1850 and came to Texas soon after, settling first at Nacogdoches. Over forty-nine years he would establish or serve sixteen Cumberland Presbyterian churches — and like so many frontier preachers, he worked as a surveyor to supplement his income.
The Hayters moved to Tarrant County in 1869, and Andrew quickly became a fixture: preacher, civic leader, surveyor. By the early 1870s a tiny settlement had gathered at the edge of his land, and in 1875 he petitioned for a post office, which took the name Haytersville. He had already founded two churches, a school, and a Masonic lodge in the area.
Then, in 1876, came the decision that made him a founder. The railroad needed to route its line through eastern Tarrant County and lay out a small town between Dallas and Fort Worth — and it needed a man with deep knowledge of the land and a source of timber for the roadbed. Hayter had both. When the railroad offered to name the new town after him, he declined the honor. He chose instead the name Arlington, after Robert E. Lee's Virginia estate. The new town drew the post office to itself, and little Haytersville was abandoned — a settlement undone by the very man who had built it.
Its place in the American story
Hayter's story is a near-perfect miniature of how the American West was actually settled. We tend to imagine towns growing organically, but a great many of them were deliberately platted — surveyed into being by men who knew both the land and the railroad's needs, in that decisive era when a rail route was the difference between a city and an empty field.
His dual calling captures something essential about the frontier, too. The line between the sacred and the practical ran right through men like Hayter, who could plant a church on Sunday and a townsite on Monday, and who understood that a durable community needed both a congregation and a courthouse, a school and a lodge.
Even his choice of name is a window onto the age. In 1876, calling a fresh Texas town Arlington — for the Virginia home of Robert E. Lee — spoke to how the recently reunited nation carried the memory of the war into its everyday map, planting Southern reverence in the names of brand-new places.
If you visit
You won't find Haytersville on any map — that's the point of the story, and worth pausing over as you stand in modern Arlington. The tiny half-mile-square settlement Hayter laid out has been swallowed many times over by one of the largest cities in North Texas, wedged, just as he placed it, between Dallas and Fort Worth.
Read the marker and then look around at the sheer scale of what grew from that half-mile square. It's a bracing lesson in how quickly open country became metropolis, and how a single surveyor's decision — where to put the depot, what to call the town — still echoes through millions of daily lives.
The marker makes a fitting stop on a drive exploring the origins of the Dallas–Fort Worth area. Bring the reverend's choice with you as you go: a man offered a town in his own name, who handed it a different name instead, and in doing so let his own settlement fade so that Arlington could rise.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Related people
- · Andrew Shannon Hayter
Related events
- · Founding of Arlington, Texas
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
City of Arlington
Arlington, TX
Arlington grew up where the Blackland Prairie meets the Eastern Cross Timbers, on land once dotted with Native American villages along Village Creek. The 1841 Battle of Village Creek and the 1843 Bird's Fort Treaty — signed by the Republic of Texas with the Delaware, Caddo, Waco, Cherokee, and many other tribes — opened the area to settlement, and in 1876 a townsite and Texas and Pacific rail stop was surveyed and named for Robert E. Lee's Virginia home. From a cotton-shipping town it grew into an amusement destination and, wedged between Fort Worth and Dallas, into one of the anchors of a vast modern metroplex, home to UT Arlington, Six Flags, and the Texas Rangers.
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