Elisha Adam Euless
Euless, Tarrant County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Elisha Adam Euless (1848-1911) migrated to Texas in 1867 from Bedford county, Tennessee and settled in Tarrant county. In July 1870 Euless married Judy Ann Trigg, also a Tennessee native. He began farming and bought land in 1871. Euless was elected a Tarrant county constable in 1876. In March 1879 Euless purchased 170 acres in the area known as Woodlawn from his mother-in-law, Mary Ann Trigg. The land included a two-story grange hall built in 1877. The first floor was used as a community school and by the local Methodist and Presbyterian churches. The grange used the top floor. Euless prospered as a farmer and produced considerable amounts of cotton and corn. In 1881 he bought 80 acres where a cotton gin stood. The community that grew around the cotton gin and the grange hall came to be called Euless. A post office, mistakenly named Euless, opened there in 1886. Euless was elected Tarrant county sheriff for two terms, serving from 1892 to 1896. He was the first sheriff to occupy the courthouse completed in 1895. He later returned to the town of Euless, then moved back to Fort Worth where he died in 1911 and was buried in the Oakwood Cemetery. (1996)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Elisha Adam Euless left Tennessee for Tarrant County in 1867 and became one of the men whose enterprise shaped its rural map. A successful cotton-and-corn farmer and elected constable and later sheriff, he bought land around a two-story grange hall whose lower floor served as school and church, and later acquired a tract with a cotton gin. The community that grew up around the gin and grange took his name, and a post office opened as Euless in 1886.
Why it matters
Euless traces how a single farmer-officeholder could give his name and shape to a North Texas town, showing the tight weave of agriculture, the Grange movement, and local self-government on the settlement frontier.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Elisha Adam Euless
- · Judy Ann Trigg
Related events
- · Founding of Euless
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Bedford Church of Christ
Bedford, TX
Founded about 1874 by members of the Spring Garden Church of Christ, this congregation—first called New Hope—built its meetinghouse on Milton Moore's farm beside a small cemetery. Moore deeded the five acres to the church in 1877, and in its early years the building also served as the community's school. The name Bedford Church of Christ came into use by 1900.
Bedford Reunion
Bedford, TX
Settlers from Bedford County, Tennessee, gave this Tarrant County community its name in the 1870s, founding New Hope Church in 1874 and, in 1882, Bedford College — a private school that doubled as the public schoolhouse and turned out graduates who became leaders across many fields. The college burned in 1894 and never reopened, but in 1912 some five hundred people gathered on the old church grounds for the first Bedford Reunion. That homecoming grew into a beloved annual event drawing crowds in the thousands, complete with sermons, music, and speeches by congressmen, until the last reunion in 1969.
Spring Garden Community
Bedford, TX
The first settler here was Samuel Cecil Holiday Witten, who came from Spring Garden, Missouri, in 1854 and lent his old hometown's name to a schoolhouse he helped build in 1865. That building doubled as chapel and meeting hall, and for a time the settlement boasted churches, a Grange, and a justice court. But fire and the rise of nearby Bedford drained the community in the 1870s, and today only a pioneer burial ground marks where it stood.
Minters Chapel Methodist Church
Grapevine, TX
About 1854 four pioneer families organized this Methodist congregation, meeting first in a log cabin on land James Cate donated for a church, school, and cemetery. They named the fellowship for the Rev. Green Washington Minter, whose leadership guided its founding and early growth, and through hardship the church became a focal point of the community. In 1967 it was moved to this spot when its original site fell within the boundaries of the new Dallas-Fort Worth airport.