Peters Colony
Lewisville, Denton County, Texas
Marker Inscription
(within area encompassed by) A reservation of land made under an Empresario contract by the Republic of Texas, 1841. Its purpose was to introduce colonists into this area. Under the first of four contracts, W. S. Peters and 19 partners agreed to introduce 600 families in three years, to furnish each with seed, shot, and a cabin, and also to survey the land. Each family was to receive 640 acres of land free and each single man, 320 acres. Of this, the company could take half for its services. Three later contracts altered terms somewhat, and although the land company underwent several internal upheavals, by 1848 there were approximately 1,800 colonists and their families in the area. Resentment over the company's share of land climaxed in 1852 when settlers drove out the unpopular agent, Henry O. Hedgcoxe, in the so-called "Hedgcoxe War." Because of its success in opening a large area of the frontier and its later effect on Texas land and immigration policy, the law establishing this colony was one of the most important in the Republic. In spite of unusual tumult and hardship, the final Peters Colony area today extends over five counties and encompasses one-fourth of the state's population, including its largest combined metropolitan area. (1970)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
In 1841 the Republic of Texas granted W. S. Peters and his partners an empresario contract to plant hundreds of colonist families across this stretch of the frontier, promising each a cabin, seed, and hundreds of free acres. Despite internal upheavals and settlers' resentment over the company's land share — which boiled over into the 1852 "Hedgcoxe War" that drove out the company agent — some 1,800 colonists had arrived by 1848. The colony's reach eventually spread over five counties encompassing what became one of the state's largest metropolitan regions.
Why it matters
Peters Colony was one of the Republic's most consequential land experiments, shaping Texas immigration and land policy and seeding the future Dallas–Fort Worth region.
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Related people
- · W. S. Peters
- · Henry O. Hedgcoxe
Related events
- · Hedgcoxe War
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Furneaux Cemetery
Carrollton, TX
Furneaux Cemetery began in 1884 when English immigrant William Furneaux, who had come to Texas in 1857 and married into a Peters Colony family, was buried on farmland he had set aside as a public graveyard. A neighbor soon donated adjoining land for a church, a cemetery association was chartered in 1888, and the surrounding heights became known as Cemetery Hill. When a 1924 tornado destroyed the frame church, the association took over the grounds.
Cox Cemetery
Dallas, TX
Cox Cemetery holds more than 400 marked graves and perhaps 100 unmarked burials, its oldest stone from 1848 marking a two-month-old child. Absalom Humbard, who came to Texas after being wounded and imprisoned during the Civil War, permanently set the ground aside for burials near White Rock Lake, where it served pioneer families—Glovers, Lavenders, Coxes, Donagheys and others who had arrived from across the United States and from Germany. It also served the vanished railroad communities of Fisher (later Calhoun) and Reinhardt before they were absorbed into Dallas.
McCombs Cemetery
Flower Mound, TX
This small community burial ground dates to the 1850s, before Denton was even chosen as county seat. Here lie pioneers who came from Tennessee in 1855—the Boyd, McCombs, Nowlin, Sigler, and Rivers families—including Nehemiah Boyd, who died of pneumonia after being caught by a blue norther while raising a log cabin for his family. Archaeological evidence suggests as many as 100 people were buried here between the 1850s and 1890s, their graves once marked by native sandstone.
Old Hall Cemetery
Lewisville, TX
In the 1840s the Republic of Texas granted colonization contracts to promoters like W. S. Peters, whose Peters Colony drew families into what became Denton County. Among the 1844 arrivals were the Holford families of Missouri, who settled the prairie that took their name, and by 1855 a two-story hall there housed a Masonic lodge above a floor used for school and church. The adjoining Old Hall Cemetery holds more than 125 nineteenth-century burials, many of them infants and children.