Pioneers of Mustang Branch
Farmers Branch, Dallas County, Texas
Marker Inscription
During the early days of settlement in the northwestern part of Dallas County, the creek that runs nearby was known as Mustang Branch. Most likely named for the mustang horses that frequented the area or for the mustang grapes that grew here. The stream provided a focal point around which some members of the Peters Colony chose to settle. In 1841 Thomas Keenan built a cabin on the creek, and within a few years a number of settlers had come to the area, attracted by its fertile soil and available water supply. Their community came to be known as Farmers Branch. A blacksmith shop and gristmill were begun in 1845 by the Rev. William Bowles, a Baptist minister. The same year I. B. Webb, another early settler, donated land for a church and school. Webb also served as first postmaster when the Farmers Branch post office was established in 1848. By the end of the decade cotton and wheat had become very productive crops on area farms. The name for this stream later became commonly known as Farmers Branch. The pioneers who first settled near the tributary left a rich heritage. Today the city of Farmers Branch is a major Dallas County commercial center.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
In the early 1840s settlers of the Peters Colony gathered along a creek called Mustang Branch — named perhaps for wild horses or the mustang grapes that grew there — drawn by its fertile soil and reliable water. Thomas Keenan built a cabin in 1841, and soon a blacksmith shop, gristmill, church, school, and post office knit the newcomers into a community they called Farmers Branch. Cotton and wheat flourished, and the settlement's name eventually spread to the stream itself.
Why it matters
The little branch and its pioneers seeded what became a major Dallas County city, showing how empresario land colonies translated directly into lasting North Texas towns.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Thomas Keenan
- · William Bowles
- · I. B. Webb
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Marsh Cemetery
Farmers Branch, TX
Harrison and Mary "Polly" Marsh brought their five children from Missouri to Texas in 1844, settling in Peters Colony along Farmers Branch Creek where they raised stock and farmed. Polly helped charter the church that became First Baptist of Farmers Branch, and the family prospered across farming, ranching, and civic life — with sons Thomas Corbin and John David serving in the Confederate Army. In the 1880s John David donated an acre for a family graveyard whose earliest recorded burial dates to 1874.
Webb Chapel Cemetery
Farmer's Branch, TX
Isaac and Mary Webb brought their family to the Peters Colony in 1844 and within a year helped form a Methodist society—the first church organized in Dallas County. Their log Webb Chapel, built in 1846, doubled as the settlement's first school, and the churchyard became a cemetery in 1847 when the Webbs' young daughter Alice died. Generations of north Texas pioneers now rest at the site, still tended by a cemetery association.
David Myers
Farmers Branch, TX
Born in Kentucky in 1797 to a Virginia family that had pushed west a generation before, David Myers became an ordained Baptist preacher in Illinois before the lure of free land carried him and three generations of his family across the Red River on Christmas Eve, 1845. Settling on a Peters Colony grant northwest of Dallas, he organized Union Baptist Church in May 1846 — the oldest continuing Baptist congregation in Dallas County — and helped plant several more before pneumonia took him after a cold ride home from preaching.
Keenan Cemetery
Farmers Branch, TX
Thomas and Sarah Keenan came to this area with the Peters Colony in 1842, and when their two-month-old son John died in 1843 they buried him here, founding one of the earliest cemeteries in present-day Dallas County. The many infant graves testify to the brutal hardships of pioneer life. The Keenans' log cabin also hosted the area's first Baptist congregation in 1846, and those buried here include settlers and veterans of conflicts from the Civil War to Vietnam.