Lanham Mill Community
Glen Rose, Somervell County, Texas
Marker Inscription
William and Mary E. Lanham and their family came to Texas from Tennessee about 1870. They purchased land and settled on a farm at the confluence of the Paluxy River and White Bluff Creek in what was at that time Hood County. William Lanham was one of 406 citizens who signed the 1875 petition to the State Legislature that led to the creation of Somervell County out of portions of Hood County. By 1877 Lanham and a partner, T. J. Hamick, owned a grist mill located on the Paluxy River about halfway between Glen Rose and Paluxy. They built a cotton gin about 1881, and continued in business until a fire destroyed the entire facility in 1898. The area around the mill operation became known as the Lanham Mill community. In addition to the mill and gin, the community included farms, churches, a public school, and a community cemetery. Although land for the cemetery was not formally deeded until 1893, headstones reveal that burials occurred here as early as 1879. The community gradually declined in the early 20th century, and by 1947 the school was closed. The Lanham Mill Cemetery remains as the last physical remnant of a once-thriving rural community. (1997)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
After coming to Texas from Tennessee around 1870, William and Mary Lanham settled where the Paluxy River meets White Bluff Creek and helped petition the state to carve out Somervell County. By 1877 Lanham ran a grist mill on the Paluxy, adding a cotton gin a few years later, and a rural community of farms, churches, a school, and a cemetery grew up around the works until fire destroyed the operation in 1898. The settlement slowly faded, and today only the Lanham Mill Cemetery marks where it stood.
Why it matters
It captures the familiar arc of a Gilded-Age mill hamlet in rural Texas—rise around a water-powered industry, then decline into a lone cemetery once the machinery was gone.
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Related people
- · William Lanham
- · Mary E. Lanham
Themes & tags
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