The Peters Colony in Tarrant County
Grapevine, Tarrant County, Texas
Marker Inscription
In 1841, W.S. Peters of Kentucky and associates contracted with the Republic of Texas to bring immigrants to this area. By 1848, Peters Colony land covered nearly 2 million acres in north central Texas, including all of Tarrant County. Speculation in unlocated land certificates was rampant. About 150 colonists and their families, most of whom were American-born farmers of meager means, settled in Tarrant County. As the most extensive empresario enterprise undertaken by the Republic, the Peters Colony helped open this area of Texas to settlement.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
In 1841 the Republic of Texas contracted with W.S. Peters of Kentucky and his associates to recruit settlers for the empty north-central prairies, launching the largest of the empresario colonies. By 1848 the Peters Colony spread across nearly two million acres, taking in all of Tarrant County, though rampant speculation in land certificates muddied the enterprise. Only about 150 colonist families — mostly American-born farmers of modest means — actually settled in the county, but they opened the door.
Why it matters
The Peters Colony was the most ambitious settlement scheme of the Republic of Texas, seeding the towns and farms that would grow into the Dallas-Fort Worth region.
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Related people
- · W.S. Peters
Related events
- · Peters Colony
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Peters Colony
Lewisville, TX
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.
Peterson Family Cemetery
Fort Worth, TX
Swedish immigrant John Peterson crossed the Atlantic in 1868, followed two years later by his wife Thilda, and after a spell in Nebraska the couple reached Tarrant County in 1872. Peterson farmed several hundred acres, and when his infant granddaughter Grace died in 1903 she became the first laid to rest in a family plot that now holds ten graves. The small cemetery stands as a marker of the area's early Swedish settlement.
Texian Land and Emigration Company
Farmers Branch, TX
This site marks the first agency, opened in January 1845, of the colonization venture better known as Peters' Colony. Under a contract secured from the Republic of Texas in 1841, William S. Peters and his associates introduced more than ten thousand settlers across seventeen counties of North Texas, seeding communities like Farmers Branch.
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.