William and Elisabeth Woody Homestead
Springtown, Parker County, Texas
Marker Inscription
William (Bill) Woody (1824-1915), one of the first Anglo settlers in Parker County, was born in Roane County, Tennessee. While living in the eastern Tennessee hills bordering North Carolina, he married Elisabeth Lydia Farmer (1822-1879) in 1846. In December 1846, six weeks after the birth of their son, the Woody family set out to Texas on foot with few possessions. Six months later, they arrived in Honey Grove in Fannin County where they met up with other family members and established a working farm. In 1851, the family traveled to White Settlement in Tarrant County where they stayed until their home was built here by 1855. Located in the Veal’s Station Community, the Woody family built a story-and-a-half, four-room dogtrot home using hand-sawn yellow pine lumber transported by ox from New Orleans. Once their house was complete, it served several distinct and important purposes for the Veal’s Station Community. The property was used as a refuge and stagecoach stop for pioneer travelers, a boarding house for college students attending Parsons College, and a community meeting place for all religious denominations in the area, as well as a cobbler’s workshop for hand-cobbled boots and shoes. In 1858, Bill Woody and community members built a two-story frame meeting house on the property which provided a church, masonic hall, town hall, common school, and later Parsons College, chartered in 1874, for the town of Veal’s Station. Elisabeth and Bill Woody are buried in the Veal’s Station Cemetery, both examples of rugged individualism that expanded the state and country in the nineteenth century.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Bill Woody, one of Parker County's first Anglo settlers, left the Tennessee hills in December 1846 and set out for Texas on foot with his wife Elisabeth and their six-week-old son. After years of moving, the family built a story-and-a-half dogtrot home here by 1855, using hand-sawn yellow pine hauled by ox from New Orleans. In the Veal's Station community the house became a stagecoach stop, a boarding house for college students, a cobbler's shop, and a meeting place for every local congregation, and in 1858 Woody helped build a frame hall that served as church, school, and eventually Parsons College.
Why it matters
The Woody homestead embodies the rugged mobility of frontier settlement, where a single hand-built house could serve as inn, school, church, and town hall for a growing community.
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Related people
- · William Woody
- · Elisabeth Lydia Farmer Woody
Themes & tags
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