Pelham Community

Pelham's shopkeepers kept a village going. A Navarro County history says John Henry opened a blacksmith shop in 1894, and A. Lockhard a store called Need More in 1895. Less and Levi Richie started a grocery in 1896, and in 1898 Lewis R. Ritchie's post office took the name of an Alabama town. Dolph Martin owned the first car, a Velie, in 1911, and Lewis and Laura Richie opened a telephone exchange in 1918. Cars and better roads, the history says, ended Pelham's role as a trade center.

What the plaque says

Pelham Community First called Forks of the Creek, this town was settled by Black families after 1866. Wesley United Methodist Church, which housed the first school, was organized in 1878 and moved near the present cemetery in 1890. Brown's Chapel A. M. E. Church was formed in 1905 and Union Baptist in 1916. Granted a post office in 1898, the town was renamed Pelham by postmaster Lewis Richie's wife for her home in Alabama. Population peaked at 350 in 1926. The post office, schools, stores, cotton gin, and telephone company that served the village are now gone, but the community heritage remains strong. (1975)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Hill County Courthouse — 19 mi
  Wesley C. Dodson's limestone Second Empire courthouse of 1890 on the Hillsboro square, gutted by fire on New Year's Day 1993 and rededicated in 1999 after a rebuilding that two Willie Nelson concerts helped pay for.
• Petroleum Industry Park — 22 mi
  The pipes and drilling tower mark where a city water well struck oil on June 9, 1894, the start of the first Texas field to produce oil and gas in important quantities.
• Blind Lemon Memorial Cemetery — 23 mi
  The Freestone County grave of the Texas blues singer Blind Lemon Jefferson, who recorded for Paramount in Chicago from 1926 and died there in December 1929.
• Confederate Reunion Grounds State Historic Site — 27 mi
  Where Limestone County Confederate veterans gathered each summer from 1888, later a water supplier in the Mexia oil boom, now a Texas Historical Commission site on the Navasota River.

More markers nearby

• Ash Creek (Pelham) School — steps away
• Brushie Prairie Methodist Church — 4.1 mi
• Salem Lutheran Church — 5.1 mi
• Near Site of Trading Post of Dr. George Washington Hill — 5.2 mi