Wentworth Community
Canton, Van Zandt County, Texas
Marker Inscription
WENTWORTH COMMUNITY IN 1858, MILO AND MARTHA MANNING ARRIVED FROM KENTUCKY WITH EIGHT CHILDREN, INCLUDING SON WENTWORTH (1847-1921), FOR WHOM THE COMMUNITY IS NAMED. HE BECAME A BUSINESSMAN AND LAND OWNER. STARR SCHOOL, THE FIRST FREE SCHOOL IN THE AREA, OPENED HERE IN 1886. THE SCHOOLHOUSE WAS ALSO AN EARLY HOUSE OF WORSHIP. WORTHY GREEN KENNEDY’S GENERAL STORE OPENED IN 1903 AND HOUSED THE MONICO POST OFFICE FOR TWO YEARS. TODD HILL SCHOOL OPENED IN 1907, LATER MERGING WITH STARR TO FORM WENTWORTH SCHOOL IN 1917. THERE WERE ALSO CHURCHES, A GRIST MILL, COTTON GIN, BLACKSMITH AND SAWMILL. THE SCHOOL CONSOLIDATED WITH CANTON IN 1949, AND THE KENNEDY STORE, WHICH ALSO SERVED AS A COMMUNITY CENTER, CLOSED IN 1952. WENTWORTH REMAINS A TESTAMENT TO GENERATIONS OF FAMILIES. 175 YEARS OF TEXAS INDEPENDENCE * 1836-2011
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Milo and Martha Manning came from Kentucky in 1858 with eight children, one of them a boy named Wentworth who would give the community its name. The neighborhood grew around Starr School — the area's first free school, opened in 1886 and doubling as an early house of worship — and later added Todd Hill School, general stores, churches, a grist mill, a cotton gin, and a sawmill. Consolidation drew the school into Canton in 1949, and when the Kennedy store closed in 1952 the community's commercial heart went quiet.
Why it matters
Wentworth is a portrait in miniature of antebellum-founded Texas farm settlements whose schoolhouses and country stores held them together until mid-century consolidation dispersed them.
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Related people
- · Milo Manning
- · Martha Manning
- · Wentworth Manning
- · Worthy Green Kennedy
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Starr Cemetery and School
Canton, TX
In 1886 James F. Starr, acting for landowner Sarah F. Clapp, deeded two acres here for a community school, and within a few years the ground was also serving as a burial place — the earliest marked grave being the infant son of B. A. and Ora Monroe, who died in 1889. A formal cemetery followed in 1911 when A. C. White and his wife sold the adjoining land. The school and cemetery knit together the scattered Starr, Todd Hill, and Wentworth communities, and among those laid to rest here is Civil War soldier Joseph Staley.
Oakland Community Cemetery
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The oldest marked grave at Oakland belongs to Oscar Lee, born and dead on the same November day in 1882, and the community's story is written in the deeds that followed: a schoolhouse in 1885 that doubled as a Sunday church, a cemetery acre from M. M. Burks in 1887, and Methodist church land from Lizzie Currey McMahon in 1894. In its prime Oakland held churches, a school, and a cotton gin owned by John T. Currey, a four-term member of the Texas House. The dozens of family names on its stones — and Sabrina Reid, believed to be of American Indian descent — make the cemetery a running record of who lived and worked here.
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