Burning Bush Colony, The
Bullard, Cherokee County, Texas
Marker Inscription
From 1913 until 1919 a religious community operated in this vicinity on the former Joseph Pickens Douglas Plantation. The colony was established by the Metropolitan Church Association, commonly called the Burning Bush Society, an evangelical organization founded in Chicago about 1900. This 400-member Burning Bush colony was set up to be a self-sustaining agricultural community. It operated its own school, sawmill, power plant, water system and sewage disposal facility. Unable to pay its debts, the colony disbanded after the close of World War I.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
From 1913 to 1919 a 400-member religious commune worked the former Douglas Plantation near Bullard, founded by the Chicago-born Metropolitan Church Association, popularly called the Burning Bush Society. The colony aimed at self-sufficiency, running its own school, sawmill, power plant, water system, and sewage works. Crushed by debt, it disbanded soon after World War I ended.
Why it matters
The colony belongs to America's long tradition of utopian communal experiments, testing whether faith and shared labor could sustain an independent society on East Texas farmland.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Joseph Pickens Douglas
Related events
- · World War I
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Dewberry Plantation House
Bullard, TX
A veteran of the War of 1812, John Dewberry came to Texas in 1835 and by the mid-1840s had settled near Tyler, becoming a successful cotton farmer and helping to organize newly created Smith County in 1846. He began this Greek Revival house, which he named "Myrtle-Vale," in 1852 as the headquarters of his large cotton plantation. A rare surviving two-story antebellum residence in the county, it stayed in the Dewberry family until 1908.
Neches Saline, C. S. A.
Tyler, TX
Before the waters of Lake Palestine swallowed it, the Neches Saline was a salt lifeline for East Texas—Spanish missionaries recorded its brine springs as early as 1765, and settlers boiled water from shallow wells to harvest the salt a frontier economy could not do without. Local salt-making faded in the 1850s as cheaper English salt arrived, but the Civil War's Federal blockade revived it: one operator was reported to run twelve furnaces here, turning out about a hundred bushels a day for the Confederacy.
Erasmus M. Hanna House
Troup, TX
Dr. Erasmus M. Hanna, one of the founders of Troup, built this cypress-and-pine Victorian home about 1872 while pursuing a career that ranged well beyond medicine—into East Texas railroads, clay industries, and the town's first hotel. His wife, Virginia Morris Hanna, came from a pioneering East Texas family. Five generations of Hanna descendants have since lived beneath its beaded bay windows and high-arched gables.
Murphey the Jeweler
Tyler, TX
North Carolina native Archibald Michael Murphey opened a jewelry and watchmaking business in Tyler in 1868, drawing on a trade he had begun as a young apprentice. His sons carried it on, and by the early twentieth century a younger son had taken over, moving the store to this site in 1919. Passed down within one family, it long offered watches, diamonds, silver, and even pianos and organs.