Field's Store Community

The Handbook of Texas names Andrew Field and his son Druey Holland Field as the merchants behind the name, and says the community already existed by 1872. In 1905 the school enrolled 179 students under four teachers. The post office, which lost its apostrophe in 1895, closed in 1909 as Myrtle Grove and Joseph built gins and won offices of their own. The 1923 school later became the Community House, and Pleasant Hill Masonic Lodge No. 380 still met in 1990.

What the plaque says

Field's Store Community Settlers began arriving in this vicinity prior to the Civil War. In the early 1870s Druey Holland Field (1809-72) and his wife Caroline (Perry) (1837-76) opened a general store in the area, and the small agricultural settlement that soon developed became known as Field's Store community. A center of business for the surrounding rural area, the settlement was the site of a school, post office, brick kiln, blacksmith shop, cotton gin and other businesses. Also known as New Hope community, it retains a sense of identity that reflects its early role as the nucleus of pioneer settlement.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Star of the Republic Museum — 18 mi
  A star-shaped museum of the Republic of Texas years, 1836 to 1846, built at Washington-on-the-Brazos after a Brenham campaign and opened on March 1, 1970.
• Washington-on-the-Brazos State Historic Site — 18 mi
  The townsite on the Brazos where delegates met in a cold, unfinished hall in March 1836 to declare Texas independent, with Independence Hall rebuilt and Anson Jones's Barrington farm worked as in 1850.
• Navasota — 18 mi
  A railroad and cotton town where the La Bahia Road crossed the Navasota River, scarred by an 1865 explosion and yellow fever, and the home ground of the songster Mance Lipscomb.
• Fanthorp Inn State Historic Site — 22 mi
  A cedar-log dogtrot cabin of 1834 on the road through Anderson that grew into a seventeen-room inn and post office for travelers of the Republic, kept by one family until 1976.

More markers nearby

• Wyatt Chapel Community Cemetery — 5.6 mi
• Prairie View A&M University — 6.5 mi
• Jacob E. Freeman — 7.0 mi
• South Texas Baptist College — 7.1 mi