Edom
Edom, Van Zandt County, Texas
Marker Inscription
According to available records the town of Edom has occupied three different locations and is the third oldest town in Van Zandt County. James Coltharp and A. C. Beall settled six miles east of here in 1849, built a sawmill, and named the town Hamburg. A stagecoach station and post office were established. The town shifted 6 miles west to a crossroads and was called Newburg. In the 1850s the town moved to its present location and became Edom. A church was organized in 1857, and a new post office opened in 1858. Edom was incorporated in 1966. (1997)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Edom is one of the oldest towns in Van Zandt County, and a restless one: it occupied three different sites before settling into its present place. Founded as Hamburg in 1849 by sawmill builders James Coltharp and A. C. Beall, it acquired a stagecoach station and post office, shifted west to a crossroads as Newburg, then moved again in the 1850s to become Edom. A church organized in 1857 and a post office in 1858 anchored the community, which finally incorporated in 1966.
Why it matters
Edom's wandering history captures how frontier Texas towns followed roads, mills, and mail routes, reshaping themselves around whatever kept a community alive.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · James Coltharp
- · A. C. Beall
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Tyler-Porter's Bluff Road
Edom, TX
First mapped by state surveyors in 1846 and 1849, this old road may predate Mexican rule, running from Tyler to Porter's Bluff on the Navarro County line. It served as a military road and a cattle trail, and by 1870 the Memphis and El Paso Stage Line made a dozen mail stops along it, nine in Van Zandt County alone. Modern highways later absorbed much of the route, though traces of the trail remained visible into the late 20th century.
Coltharp-Beall House
Edom, TX
James Coltharp built this house in 1849, on the eve of the great migrations that filled East Texas. It served as a stagecoach stop, hosted the area's first sermon, and housed the Hamburg post office — a single building doing the work of inn, church, and civic hub. It was recorded as a Texas Historic Landmark in 1964.
Ben Wheeler Community
Ben Wheeler, TX
First known as Clough for the settler who bought the land in 1868 and opened a post office in his home, this East Texas community was renamed Ben Wheeler in honor of a Kentucky-born mail carrier — the first to bring the mail into Van Zandt County. The town grew quickly in the 1880s and early 1890s, boasting general stores, gins, mills, hotels, churches, and the Alamo Institute, before a series of fires and shifting fortunes slowed its growth. It stabilized in the mid-twentieth century as area farmers turned to ranching and haying.
Allen Cemetery
Murchison, TX
The Murchison community grew up as a station on the Texas and St. Louis Railway, named for Confederate officer T.F. Murchison, and soon supported a school, post office, cotton gin, churches, and farms of corn, cotton, and peaches. This burial ground served residents from the late 1800s, with James Mack Pettiet's 1890 grave the oldest marked stone and the family of J.C. Allen giving it its name. Pioneers, farmers, ranchers, and veterans reaching back to the Civil War rest here under vertical stones and fraternal markers.