Grove Hill

Before Leonard existed, Grove Hill was the largest settlement in southwest Fannin County at the time of the Civil War, with a post office named Oak Hill, according to a Leonard history by Tom Hymer. The prairie lay between two thickets, and the southern one, Wildcat Thicket, was described as briars and thorn vines so dense that a person could hardly see into it by day, a haven for outlaws and fugitives. The Handbook of Texas ties several killings of the Lee-Peacock feud, 1865 to 1872, to it. After the war families came from Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia and Mississippi.

What the plaque says

Grove Hill The earliest settler in this area was George w. Smith, a native of Georgia, who moved here in 1844. By the early 1850s, a community had developed and a post office was established under the name Oak Hill. The first church, a Baptist congregation, was organized in 1855 at the home of pioneer settler Joseph Ring. During the Civil War several residents formed a Confederate militia unit known as the Oak Hill Home Guard. The first church building, completed in 1869, was also used for Masonic Lodge meetings and school classes. In 1878 William Thomas Clark, F. K. Taylor, and T. C. Cobb, trustees of the Methodist Episcopal Church, purchased four acres at this site for a community schoolhouse, sanctuary, and cemetery. The earliest marked grave in the community burial ground is that of William B. A. Thomas (d. 1862). Other graves include those of pioneer settlers and at least one former slave, Jack Sudderth (1799-1898). The settlement of Grove Hill began to decline in the early 1880s after the nearby railroad town of Leonard (3.5 mi. SW) was established. The Masonic Lodge moved there soon after and the school merged with the Leonard District in 1942. (1981)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Sam Rayburn House State Historic Site — 9.5 mi
  The two-story farmhouse west of Bonham that the longtime Speaker of the House built in 1916 and kept as his home, left as he lived in it and open as a museum since 1975.
• Audie Murphy / American Cotton Museum — 22 mi
  A Greenville museum of Hunt County's military heroes, including Audie Murphy, and of cotton, which keeps the engine of what it says was the world's largest inland cotton compress.
• Eisenhower Birthplace State Historic Site — 28 mi
  The small frame house beside the Katy tracks in Denison where Dwight Eisenhower was born in 1890, bought by townspeople in 1946 and given to Texas in 1958.
• Heard Natural Science Museum & Wildlife Sanctuary — 30 mi
  A 289-acre sanctuary in McKinney that Bessie Heard founded at the age of 80, with five habitats, a 50-acre wetland and 6.5 miles of trails.

More markers nearby

• Joseph F. Fenner — steps away
• Valley Creek — 1.9 mi
• First Baptist Church of Bailey — 3.0 mi
• Ashley Lodge No. 681, A. F. & A. M. — 3.1 mi