Mansfield Mill
Mansfield, Tarrant County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Julian Feild (1825-1897) and Ralph Mann (1825-1906) became acquainted in Harrison County, Texas, about 1850. About 1854 they built a mill near the Clear and West Forks of the Trinity River. The two business partners came south of Fort Worth in 1856 and at this site found the ruins of a mill that had ben constructed by Charles Turner. With the help of local settlers and brickmaker S.W.A. Hook (1836-1917), Mann and Feild built a three-story steam-powered wheat and corn mill during the winter of 1859-60. The mill attracted business from San Antonio to the Oklahoma Territory. The community that developed around the mill was given the name "Mansfeild" (now Mansfield). During the Civil War, The Confederate Government collected for its use a certain proportion of the mill's output. After the War, Government contracts were secured to supply flour for Federal forts. Julian Feild sold his interest in the mill in 1874. The mill continued in operation until the early part of the 20th century. The site has been used since that time as a Memorial to World War I veterans and for municipal offices. It is a historic site as the beginning of the City of Mansfield. (1985)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Partners Julian Feild and Ralph Mann, who had met in Harrison County around 1850, came south of Fort Worth and in the winter of 1859–60 raised a three-story steam-powered grist mill on the ruins of an earlier one. The mill drew business from San Antonio to the Oklahoma Territory, and the town that grew up around it — first "Mansfeild," then Mansfield — took its founders' names. During the Civil War the Confederacy claimed a share of its output, and afterward federal contracts kept its flour moving to army forts.
Why it matters
The mill is literally the origin of Mansfield, showing how a single piece of frontier industry could seed a whole city — and how such enterprises fed both sides of the era's conflicts.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Julian Feild
- · Ralph Mann
- · Charles Turner
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Ralph Man Homestead
Mansfield, TX
Ralph Sandiford Mann came to Texas from South Carolina in the 1850s and, with his brother-in-law Julian Field, founded the town of Mansfield — its name a blend of their own. Their steam-powered grist mill supplied grain to the Confederacy during the Civil War and later fed U.S. troops at frontier forts Belknap and Griffin. About 1866 Mann built the log core of this home, later expanded in brick, and gave land for the town cemetery where he rests.
Rodgers Cemetery
Kennedale, TX
Georgia native Thomas F. Rodgers and his wife Mary came to Texas from Kansas in the late 1850s, and he built a life as a successful farmer and stock raiser—service in the Confederate Army interrupting those years. He became one of Kennedale's leading landowners, and part of his property was set aside as this burial ground. Most who rest here are Rodgers family, though the earliest marked grave belongs to a neighbor's infant son.
Hawkins Cemetery
Arlington, TX
Named for Tennessee-born pioneer Harvey Hawkins, who received a 160-acre land grant signed by Governor Sam Houston in 1860, this cemetery began as a family plot for the Tate Springs community. By local memory an enslaved man named Poly Penn was the first buried here, though his grave is unmarked; the earliest lettered stone dates to 1868. As the settlement grew, the plot became a public burial ground in 1890, chronicling the pioneer families who put down roots in the mid-1800s.
Johnson Station Cemetery
Arlington, TX
Johnson Station began in the 1840s as a ranger station and trading post on the North Texas frontier, and its cemetery remains the clearest reminder of that vanished settlement. The oldest marked grave dates to 1863, though older, unmarked burials likely lie among them; here rest pioneer families, Civil War veterans, and charter members of an early Masonic lodge, in a district long since absorbed into Arlington.