Corn Hill Community

The plaque follows the Corn Hill families who moved to Jarrell. Others stayed close by. The Handbook of Texas says that after the Bartlett and Western Railway passed Corn Hill by in 1909, businessmen tried to build a new business community southeast of the old town and northeast of Theon. They called it New Corn Hill, and it served farmers who had come from Germany, Austria, Silesia, Moravia and Bohemia. County maps of 1946 still showed a church, a cemetery, a business, two schools and many houses. Later maps kept the name and the cemetery.

What the plaque says

Corn Hill Community Settled primarily by settlers from Texas and southern states, Corn Hill was one of the earliest communities in Williamson County. John E. King, county judge from 1858 to 1860, named it for the home he built on a hill and nearby cornfield in 1852. The dispersed agricultural community was the first stop on the stage line running from Georgetown to Fort Gates (Coryell County). A post office opened in 1855 and by the 1860s, an influx of new residents settled here. In 1878, George G. Grant established corn Hill Academy Male and Female School, built on land donated by Judge King. It thrived and in 1886 moved to a new two-story building with four classrooms, a bell tower and an auditorium, which provided meeting space for local church services. By 1893, a public school opened as part of Corn Hill Independent School District. By the end of the 19th century, Corn Hill had a saddle club, several churches, two locl cotton gins, Corn Hill College, fraternal lodges and school organizations. By the early 1900s, community residents became active in Populist politics and in the Farmers' Union. Industrial activity of the early 1900s included the Corn Hill and Gravis Telephone Company and a waterworks; a planned interurban to Bartlett never materialized. The settlement began to decline in 1909 when the Bartlett Western Railway bypassed two miles to the north, establishing the town of Jarrell. Steam engines helped move homes and businesses to the new townsite, and other moved to the village of New Corn Hill, but many residents chose to remain here. Today, the dispersed Corn Hill settlement survives as a reminder of the area's early agrarian heritage. (2007)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Williamson County Courthouse — 12 mi
  The fifth Williamson County courthouse, a Beaux Arts building by C. H. Page, rises over a Georgetown square of more than 50 Victorian-era buildings.
• Inner Space Cavern — 14 mi
  A Georgetown cave found in 1963 when highway engineers drilled test holes, holding Pleistocene fossils and 72-degree rooms that visitors reach by an artificial tunnel.
• The Round Rock — 21 mi
  A table-shaped stone in Brushy Creek gave Round Rock its name in 1854; the Chisholm Trail crossed the creek near it, and Old Town stayed behind when the railroad pulled the town east.
• Temple Railroad and Heritage Museum — 26 mi
  The Santa Fe depot of 1911 in a railroad town that began in 1880 as a construction camp, now a museum with locomotives and cars parked beside the active rail yard.

More markers nearby

• Cornhill Cemetery — 0.7 mi
• Daniel Harrison — 0.7 mi
• Jarrell — 2.2 mi
• Community of Theon — 3.1 mi