Spring Hill
Dawson, Navarro County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Oldest community in Navarro County. The springs at this site supplied water to Indians for centuries before white settlers arrived. In 1838 Dr. George Washington Hill (1814-60) built a trading post near the springs, and in October of that year a skirmish between a surveying party and Kickapoo Indians occurred in this vicinity. After serving as Republic of Texas Secretary of War under President Sam Houston, Dr. Hill returned here about 1843, reopened the trading post, built a home, and began practicing medicine. In Jan. 1847, his brother-in-law, Robert Harve Matthews (1814-94), settled here. A post office was established on Nov. 5, 1849, with Dr. Hill as postmaster. A building erected in 1850 served as both church and schoolhouse; by 1855, Matthews had opened a store. During the Civil War, a Confederate training camp was located here. At the height of its growth, in the 1870s, Spring Hill boasted general mercantile stores, blacksmith shops, saloons, a drugstore, hotel, masonic lodge, flour mill, cotton gin, and rock quarry. Decline began in 1881, when the community was bypassed by the Cotton Belt Railroad. The post office closed on June 15, 1906. The cemetery and a few foundations bordering deserted streets remain to mark site of Spring Hill.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
The oldest community in Navarro County grew up around springs that had watered Native peoples for centuries. Dr. George Washington Hill built a trading post here in 1838 — the year a surveying party skirmished with Kickapoo Indians nearby — and after serving as Republic of Texas Secretary of War he returned to practice medicine. Spring Hill flourished into the 1870s with mills, stores, and saloons, hosted a Confederate training camp during the Civil War, then declined after the railroad bypassed it in 1881.
Why it matters
Spring Hill's rise and fall compresses the whole arc of frontier Texas — Native homeland, Republic-era trading post, Civil War camp, and railroad ghost town — into a single site.
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Related people
- · George Washington Hill
- · Robert Harve Matthews
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Dr. George Washington Hill
Dawson, TX
George Washington Hill, a Transylvania University–trained physician, came to Texas in 1837 and threw himself into the affairs of the young republic. He served as an Indian agent, sat in the Congress of Texas, and held the post of Secretary of War under Presidents Sam Houston and Anson Jones. Hill County was named in his honor before his death in Navarro County in 1860.
Near Site of Trading Post of Dr. George Washington Hill
Dawson, TX
On the raw frontier of the Republic of Texas, Dr. George Washington Hill practiced medicine while helping build a fledgling nation. Trained at Transylvania University, he came to Texas in 1836, served as a surgeon at Fort Houston, and rose to sit in the Republic's Congress, act as Indian agent, and briefly serve as secretary of war. His home, Spring Hill, was the first settlement in Navarro County, and stood near the site where surveyors, including his own brother, met a violent end in a clash with the Kickapoo.
Battle Creek Burial Ground
Dawson, TX
In October 1838 a party of twenty-five Texan surveyors pressing into Kickapoo hunting grounds ignored warnings to withdraw and was ambushed, with only seven men escaping and four of those wounded. Survivors later returned to bury their fallen comrades together in a common grave on this ground. The episode became known as the Battle Creek fight, one of the bloodiest surveyor clashes of the Republic era.
Pisgah Ridge
Richland, TX
Pisgah Ridge, a limestone outcropping named for the biblical Mount Pisgah, long drew people to its caves, creeks, and game. In 1830 Cherokees reportedly burned a village here that had been shared by Tonkawa and Tawakoni people, and within a few years settlers of European descent arrived, building a stagecoach inn and small communities along the Springfield Road. The area gained a rough reputation from a family feud and its links to outlaw John Wesley Hardin before the railroad bypassed it in the 1870s and drew residents away.