Historical Marker
William Terry Allen Log Cabin
White Settlement, Tarrant County · Texas
Erected 1978
The cabin stands in a community whose name began as a description. The Handbook of Texas says that in the early 1850s White Settlement meant a few isolated farms and one or two trading posts west of Fort Worth, toward the Parker County line. By the late 1850s three Tennessee brothers named Farmer anchored a community, and Kentuckian Paul Isbell joined them, moving there with the people he enslaved. A post office served the place from 1866 into the 1870s, and the railroads passed it by in the 1880s. The town incorporated in 1941.
What the plaque says
William Terry Allen Log Cabin In 1854 young William Allen (1842-1893) came with his family to Tarrant County from Todd County, Kentucky. By 1857 they had settled at this location on 360 acres. After serving in the Confederate army, Allen married Sarah Fannie Grant (1849-1870). They bought 160 acres about 1864 and built this 13' x18' cabin on White Settlement Road six miles west of Tarrant County Courthouse. After his first wife died, Allen married her sister Theodocia E. Grant (1854-1931). They added to the cabin several times, including a bedroom, "The Professor's Room". It was reserved during school months for the local teacher. The cabin was the family home until 1908, when a frame cottage was built nearby. In 1933 Allen's heirs sold 22 acres which included the cabin. The new owner moved the cabin north of the original site and enlarged it. In 1953 the land was sold to the United States government for runway additions to Carswell Air Force Base. The cabin was moved to Fort Worth. The White Settlement Historical Society, organized in 1976, raised funds to number the logs and move the dismantled cabin to the present site. It was restored to its original size and opened to groups interested in local history. (1978)
Where it stands
32.75808, -97.46134 · Directions
Worth the stop nearby
- National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame — 5.5 miA hall of fame begun in Hereford in 1975 to honor rodeo women, widened in 1977 to Western heritage, and housed in Fort Worth's Cultural District since 2002.
- Kimbell Art Museum — 5.6 miLouis Kahn's cycloid-vaulted museum of 1972, built from Kay Kimbell's bequest and joined in 2013 by Renzo Piano's pavilion for the exhibitions the Kahn galleries could not hold.
- Fort Worth Stockyards — 7.0 miThe brick-street cattle market where Armour and Swift built packing plants in 1902, now a National Register district with a Coliseum, a museum and a longhorn drive twice a day.
- Tarrant County Courthouse — 7.4 miA pink-granite courthouse of 1895 on the bluff where the Army set up Fort Worth in 1849, in a county named for the man who led the 1841 attack on the Native villages of Village Creek.