Spring Garden Community
Bedford, Tarrant County, Texas
Marker Inscription
The first permanet settler to this area was Samuel Cecil Holiday Witten of Spring Garden, Missouri, who came here in 1854. In 1865, with Milton Moore, he built a schoolhouse here which was named for his Missouri home. The building also served as a Chapel and Meeting Hall. Once the site of churches, a Grange, and a Justice of the Peace Court, Spring Garden declined in the 1870s because fire and the nearby development of Bedford. Only the pioneer burial ground at this site marks the location of the early settlement.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
The first settler here was Samuel Cecil Holiday Witten, who came from Spring Garden, Missouri, in 1854 and lent his old hometown's name to a schoolhouse he helped build in 1865. That building doubled as chapel and meeting hall, and for a time the settlement boasted churches, a Grange, and a justice court. But fire and the rise of nearby Bedford drained the community in the 1870s, and today only a pioneer burial ground marks where it stood.
Why it matters
Spring Garden is a small ghost of the many antebellum settlements that flourished briefly and then vanished as railroads and rival towns redrew the map of Texas.
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Related people
- · Samuel Cecil Holiday Witten
- · Milton Moore
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Bedford Reunion
Bedford, TX
Settlers from Bedford County, Tennessee, gave this Tarrant County community its name in the 1870s, founding New Hope Church in 1874 and, in 1882, Bedford College — a private school that doubled as the public schoolhouse and turned out graduates who became leaders across many fields. The college burned in 1894 and never reopened, but in 1912 some five hundred people gathered on the old church grounds for the first Bedford Reunion. That homecoming grew into a beloved annual event drawing crowds in the thousands, complete with sermons, music, and speeches by congressmen, until the last reunion in 1969.
Bedford Church of Christ
Bedford, TX
Founded about 1874 by members of the Spring Garden Church of Christ, this congregation—first called New Hope—built its meetinghouse on Milton Moore's farm beside a small cemetery. Moore deeded the five acres to the church in 1877, and in its early years the building also served as the community's school. The name Bedford Church of Christ came into use by 1900.
Elisha Adam Euless
Euless, TX
Elisha Adam Euless left Tennessee for Tarrant County in 1867 and became one of the men whose enterprise shaped its rural map. A successful cotton-and-corn farmer and elected constable and later sheriff, he bought land around a two-story grange hall whose lower floor served as school and church, and later acquired a tract with a cotton gin. The community that grew up around the gin and grange took his name, and a post office opened as Euless in 1886.
Minters Chapel Methodist Church
Grapevine, TX
About 1854 four pioneer families organized this Methodist congregation, meeting first in a log cabin on land James Cate donated for a church, school, and cemetery. They named the fellowship for the Rev. Green Washington Minter, whose leadership guided its founding and early growth, and through hardship the church became a focal point of the community. In 1967 it was moved to this spot when its original site fell within the boundaries of the new Dallas-Fort Worth airport.