Antioch Community
Tolar, Hood County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Antioch, formerly an active farming community, is today a rural locale of western Hood County. The last Indian fight in the county, called Point of the Timbers or Battle of Lookout Point, occurred in this vicinity in September 1869. Organized settlement began in the 1870s, when families established ranches at the head of Stroud's Creek upstream from Thorp Spring. Stage routes from Fort Worth and Tolar also passed nearby. A Baptist church, school and cemetery begun two miles east in 1881 became a small settlement called Stroud's Creek. In August 1889, the congregation moved to this site and changed the church name to Antioch. The Musick family gave land for the church and an adjoining cemetery. The first grave in Antioch Cemetery, that of teenager Lottie Brown, dates to May 1890. Confederate veterans George Washington Brown (1811-1891) and Austin Musick (1826-1897) are also interred there. The cemetery became inactive in 1941. By 1956, membership of the Antioch Missionary Baptist Church had dwindled to twelve members, and so the congregation disbanded and the church building was moved to Paluxy. In 1894, Ellis School of Stroud's Creek split into Ellis, Asbury and Antioch schools. Early Antioch teacher Richard Mugg later became county school superintendent and county judge. Asbury merged with Antioch (known locally as Midway) in 1920. Classes ended in 1941 and students attended Tolar School, where the mascot of the Rattlers was inspired by a four-foot rattlesnake captured on Antioch's Jarvis Ranch. With the school and church buildings now gone, the cemetery marks the historic center of Antioch. (2006)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Now a quiet rural locale, Antioch began as a ranching and farming community in western Hood County in the 1870s, near where the county's last Indian fight—the Battle of Lookout Point—occurred in 1869. Settlers established a church, school, and cemetery, and the graves here include Confederate veterans George Washington Brown and Austin Musick. As church and school closed through the mid-20th century, the cemetery remained as the community's historic heart.
Why it matters
Antioch traces the full arc of frontier settlement in Texas—from the closing of the Indian wars to homesteading, community-building, and eventual decline—preserved now in a country graveyard.
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Related people
- · George Washington Brown
- · Austin Musick
Related events
- · Battle of Lookout Point
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Stroud Creek Cemetery
Tolar, TX
The Stroud Creek community grew up in western Hood County during the late 1870s and early 1880s, drawn by land grants, a nearby stagecoach line, and the end of Native American raids that had long deterred settlement. Burials began on Benjamin Irby's land in 1883 and the ground later served the town of Tolar, gathering community leaders, merchants, educators, farmers, and veterans beneath curbed plots, fraternal emblems, and upright stones.
Martin Cemetery
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Martin Cemetery may date to 1859, when Nathan Holt was buried here after being killed in an Indian raid on the Texas frontier. It bears the name of William Harvey Martin, who came from Illinois in 1855 and acquired the land in 1876, and its stones—granite, concrete, and hand-carved—mark burials reaching back to about 1860. The graveyard stands as a quiet record of the hazards and endurance of early Hood County settlers.
John W. Bull Stone House
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Tennessee-born John W. Bull came to Texas in 1853, preempted land here in 1861 within sight of Comanche Peak, and in 1865 took part in the Dove Creek fight against Kickapoo people migrating through the region. After his land grant was approved, he hired mason Pat Gannon to build this stone house from a nearby quarry, chiseling the date "March 17, 1872" into the chimney. It stands as one of the area's earliest masonry homes on what was then the Texas frontier.
Barnard's Trading Post No. 2
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In 1843 the Torrey brothers and their friend George Barnard—with Sam Houston as a silent partner—won a contract to build trading posts along the Brazos frontier. Barnard's fair dealing earned Native trust, and after ransoming a young captive, Juana Cavasos, from the Comanches, the family settled her with his brother Charles at a post near Comanche Peak. When the government removed the region's Native peoples to Oklahoma in 1859, the trade faded, and Charles built a gristmill whose town became Glen Rose.