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’ ve always been fascinated by towns or communities that once were , yet are no more — or if they are , there is little proof . These are places where , despite human industry , things just didn ’ t pan out . For one reason or another , folks who ’ d banded together to make a town just couldn ’ t make a go of it .
Perhaps the railroad didn ’ t come . In the late 19th and early 20th centuries , rerouting tracks around a fledgling community sounded the death knell . Upstart towns often picked up and moved a few miles to where the railroad ended up , to the place lucrative considerations and concessions had drawn the iron tracks like a magnet .
Or maybe the Indians were too wild , unwilling to abandon their generations-old traditions for some new “ White Way .” The Texas frontier often retreated eastward when Comanche and Kiowa warriors took to the warpath to raid and pillage , and sometimes to kill those who had the audacity to stake claims on their traditional hunting grounds , to try and own the land . Even those tribes that initially tolerated white settlement recoiled once they learned the true meaning of “ Manifest Destiny .”
A sure sign a community had designs on the future was the acquirement of a post office , that citadel of communication that “ neither snow , nor rain , nor heat , nor gloom of night …” could hinder . If you had a post office , well , you were someplace . Trick was ( and it seemed like a dirty trick ) if not enough folks hung around to justify the post office , there were no qualms about closing the doors . Some opened only to close a few months later , while others struggled on for a few years , and still others managed to , if not thrive , at least survive .
Industrialization and harsh weather stamped out many a rural community , chased people off the farms and into the cities and larger towns where jobs could be had and droughts were somebody else ’ s problem .
One North Central Parker County community probably known mostly to local history buffs was Carter , or Cartersville ( Carterville ) as it was originally known . Ten miles north
Parker County Postal Map 1920s
of Weatherford , Carter sprouted the year after the Civil War battlefields fell silent and the seceding states ( including Texas ) had been dragged back into a union they so wanted to escape . Unreconstructed Southerners were about to pay the price for their secessionist ideas and actions — Reconstruction stood at the door and had no intention of knocking . Hard times .
On the cusp of this return to “ a more perfect union ,” in 1866-67 , a Judge W . F . Carter and two partners — T . Parkinson and H . C . Vardy — established the community , building a flourmill on the banks of Clear Fork Creek . Soon the settlement boasted its own cotton gin , general store and blacksmith shop and a school and church , as well . Statewide recognition came to Carter in 1873 when the State Fair of Texas in Houston judged its flour the best in the state .
Judge Carter apparently arrived in Texas 10 years before starting the creek-bank community . According to Henry Smythe ’ s 1877 book , Historical Sketch of Parker County and Weatherford , Texas , Judge W . F . Carter came from New York , arriving in Parker County in November ,
1857 . The newcomer soon began construction on a steam-flouring mill on North Main in Weatherford . Smythe wrote it was the first mill in the county .
“… One year after , the mill was completed and began its operations with a first grist of corn ,” Smythe wrote . “ This was an event of considerable importance , because steam was , for the first time , introduced into manufactures in this then remote section of the country . The nearest mill was Witt ’ s , seventy-three miles east of Weatherford . That mill supplied all west of it , except the flour obtained at Jefferson and some small towns east .”
Smythe assured , at the time of his writing , the mill on North Main was still a going concern with “ three run of stone , with capacity for three more .” He said a 60-horse-power engine powered the mill .
Meanwhile , with things looking up and commerce seemingly taking root along the banks of the Clear Fork in Cartersville , by 1888 the town ’ s 75 residents were granted a post office and officially adopted the name “ Carter .” Carter held on longer than many rural communities in Parker
MAY 2017 PARKER COUNTY TODAY
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