Greenwood
Greenwood, Wise County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Pioneer settlers came to this area as early as the 1850s. Local tradition states that the Greenwood and Hart families were among the first settlers in the area, and that the community was named for the Greenwood family and the creek was named for the Hart family. As the town of Greenwood began to grow, businesses, churches, a cemetery, school, and Masonic Lodge were established. A post office was opened in 1877, and a town well was dug by John Karr Berry in the early 1890s. At its peak, the town boasted two saloons, four grocery stores, two drug stores, a hotel, bank, hardware store, barber shop, blacksmith shop, cotton gin, and the Greenwood Gazette newspaper. The Greenwood Male and Female College, although in operation for less than twenty years, provided quality education for young people of the community. This small settlement has served as a supply center for surrounding farming communities for over one hundred years. It has also been a center of social and religious activities. Three churches serve the Greenwood area: Greenwood Baptist Church, founded as Hart's Creek Missionary Baptist Church about 1872; Greenwood Methodist Church, founded about 1880; and Greenwood Church of Christ, founded in 1896.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Settlers began arriving in this corner of Wise County as early as the 1850s, with the Greenwood and Hart families remembered among the first. The town that grew here gained a post office in 1877 and at its peak bustled with saloons, groceries, a hotel, a bank, a cotton gin, and its own newspaper, the Greenwood Gazette. It even supported the short-lived Greenwood Male and Female College, and three churches founded between 1872 and 1896 still anchor the area.
Why it matters
Greenwood's rise as a farm-country supply and education center illustrates the ambitions of small North Texas communities that sought to bring learning and commerce to the frontier.
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Related people
- · John Karr Berry
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Dr. William Renshaw
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Illinois-born William Renshaw studied medicine and practiced in Tennessee, then traveled to Texas in 1853 to claim a land grant his wife Sarah had inherited in Wise County. After serving in the Tennessee legislature, he moved his family to Texas in 1859 to become the county's first permanent physician, riding a practice that stretched from Denton to Jacksboro. He and his wife organized one of the county's earliest schools, and after the Civil War he opened a Decatur drugstore with his son.
Era, The Town of
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Settled in the 1870s in a fertile farming belt, the village of Era was platted by merchant J. N. Gist and got its post office in 1881, named for a young girl, Era Hargroves, who had recently died. It soon bustled with a blacksmith, cotton gin, hotel, stores, and three churches, and chartered the Era Institute in 1897 offering classes from primary through college level. Among its notable sons was Robert E. Thomason, later a U.S. congressman and federal judge.
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Gathered around a good spring at the foot of the hill that named it, Sand Hill became a cradle of pioneer life in the country that would become Wise County. The first Methodist church in the area was organized in Jim Brooks's home in 1854, and a donated cabin nicknamed "Old Swayback" for its sagging ridgepole soon served all faiths as church and, by 1855, probably the county's first school. A campground, gristmill, Masonic lodge, and cemetery followed, the graveyard now holding settlers, Civil War veterans, and the noted Texas Ranger Ira Long.
Preskitt Cemetery
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The land here was first deeded to the trustees of the Lee School community in 1885, and the following year half of it was set aside for a burial ground, with the earliest marked grave belonging to infant Pearl Hobbs in 1890. Those laid to rest include the first farm families of the 1870s and 1880s and a number of military veterans, among them Union Army veteran and early school trustee James W. Haynes. Once tied to a Baptist church that was torn down around 1930, the cemetery held some 172 known graves by the turn of the 21st century.