History of Hopkins County

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The first legislature of the State of Texas on March 25, 1846, created the County of Hopkins from land formerly in Lamar and Nacogdoches counties. The local commissioners were William Barker, Robert Hargraves, James E. Hopkins, James Ward and Williams Wilkins. Among other duties, they were commissioned to find the geographical center of the country and there place the county seat, to be named "Tarrant," in honor of General Edward H. Tarrant (1796-1858), a hero of some of the wars of the United States and the Republic of Texas and a resident of the nearby area. It was stipulated in the act to establish the county that after choosing the site for the courthouse, "...the Commissioners shall proceed to lay off a town and sell the lots therein at public auction, on a credit of 21 months; and all or other donation, shall be applied to the erection of public buildings for the use of the county."

Eldridge Hopkins, whose family had been honored in the naming of the county, gave land for the town site of Tarrant. The earliest public business was conducted in the open air because there was no building for official use. A log cabin was soon erected for temporary courthouse, which had to be used for the ensuing five years, as financial arrangements could not be made for a permanent building. It appears likely that the credit extended for town improvements was slow to bring in revenue.

A post office was established in Tarrant in 1847, with R. R. Cook as postmaster. At last, in 1851, a contract was let for the construction of a permanent courthouse. The contractor was D. Foster, whose bond was endorsed by Eldridge Hopkins, Hiram C. Russell and James B. Simpson. Something evidently went wrong. The bondsmen asked on March 15, 1852, to be released from their responsibility and the contract of Foster was forfeited. Hezehiah Hargrave, who may have been a subcontractor or workman, received two subsequent payments for some work and William S. Houghton became the next contractor employed to complete the building. Even though the commissioners' court ordered the county treasurer to fund Houghton's work by turning over to him all of the State revenue received in 1852-53, the building operations floundered for lack of funds.

When some early ecologist observed that cattle herds driven in from Louisiana were exploiting the grasslands of Hopkins County, which were free to all citizens, a remedy was found. The out-of-state cattle were in violation of Texas law, for Texas grass was not free to those cattle. Hopkins County brought action against the owners of the visiting cattle, the owners were convicted and their cattle were sold at public auction, bringing into the treasury $1,772.46 - capital enough to continue the construction work. In fact, with such advantages, a second story was added, with Henry Doughty as contractor and G. H. Crowder as his associate. There ultimately graced the public square a good farm courthouse with chimneys at its two ends and a well of water in the yard. The voters regarded the improvements with pardonable pride. The completion was made in September 1853.

Meantime, a jury of review had met and let out contracts for blazed trails from the county seat to Titus County on the east; to Red River County on the northeast; to Lamar County on the north; and to Jordon's Mill on the south. A Masonic Lodge was organized in the town in1851 and soon opened a lodge-sponsored school where boys and girls were taught in separate rooms.

Tarrant became a thriving town, with a tannery, a steam mill, a blacksmith shop and a brick kiln. There were accommodations for visitors at the Hopkins Hotel. During the rapid expansion in the decade of the 1850's, the Texas Star, a newspaper, was published in Tarrant and the Methodist denomination organized a college and built a structure for its operation.

A reading of the Hopkins County returns in the Federal Census for the year 1860 shows that there were 278 persons inhabiting the town of Tarrant that year. There were 147 males and 131 females. Many were minor children, of course. Vocationally speaking, there were five attorneys, three blacksmiths, one cabinet maker, thirteen carpenters, four store clerks (including grocer clerks), thirteen day laborers and farm laborers, seven farmers, four grocery (saloon) keepers, one mail carrier, seven merchants, four physicians, two public officials (County Chief Justice Green H. Crowder, 40, a native of Alabama and Deputy Sheriff D. Reynolds, 28, from Tennessee), on saddler, two seamstresses, two students (one of these studying law), one tailor, five teachers (common school, dancing and music), one teamster, four toy makers, one trader, two wagoners and one wheelwright.

Progress and prosperity characterized the town until the era of the Civil War and Reconstruction. County business was conducted in Tarrant until 1868, in fact. In that year, however, there existed a counter authority that was able to override the will of the people of Hopkins County. This was the Federal Army of the Occupation, which was sent to Texas to supervise the attitudes and demeanor of the people in order to enforce the political changes which had been brought about by the Confederacy's downfall and the need of the Southern States to be reformed before they came back into the Union as full-fledged, sovereign states. Capt. Thomas M. Tolman was the troop commander deployed to Hopkins County and appeared to have been garrisoned in Sulphur Springs. This is understandable because the population of Sulphur Springs, even in 1860, was considerably larger than that of Tarrant. Interestingly enough, the post office in which the people of Sulphur Springs received their mail was Bright Star, but the common name of the population center had been "Sulphur Springs", even before the Civil War. The name of the community was probably applied to a rather large geographic area, rather thickly populated for that time and place. Capt. Tolman found that the road from Sulphur Springs to Tarrant was practically impassable and a hindrance to him in his enforcement of the military government. As early as 1857, when Masons in the Sulphur Springs community petitioned for a lodge of their own, separate from the one in Tarrant, they had given as a reason for their petition a real difficulty in traveling to Tarrant and apparently the war years had not allowed the county any leisure for improving the roads.

The citizens understood the problem. A portion of the road from Sulphur Springs to Tarrant, a distance of five miles, was not only rough and unpleasant, but also actually dangerous to travel even in good weather and in broad daylight. But when Capt. Tolman ordered that the county records be moved from Tarrant to Sulphur Springs to suit his convenience, the people of Tarrant were incensed. This occurred in 1868 and the official business of the county had to be conducted in Sulphur Springs, rather than Tarrant, until the second week in May 1870, when civilian rule was restored to the county and the records were returned to the courthouse in Tarrant. However, the elation of the citizens was short lived, because during the called session of the 12th Legislature during the year 1870, the Governor E. J. Davis-dominated lawmakers passed a special act to make Sulphur Springs the permanent county seat of Hopkins County.

The courthouse in the town of Tarrant was closed permanently at that time and Sheriff J. A. Weaver was ordered to place the structure up for sale, whereupon the law partners, A. G. Matthews and Judge J. A. Putman bought and dismantled it. Moved to Sulphur Springs, the building materials were remodeled into a two-story dwelling house situated on Connally Street, where the Williams Hotel became a landmark.

Shorn of the original reason for its existence, the town of Tarrant began to fade away. The dwellings and business buildings could easily be removed and reconstructed elsewhere. The cemetery, doubtless, could have been moved, with legal reinterments of the dead, but this was not done. There continued to be a rural community in the area. The cemetery was cared for and continued to be in use on occasion. Long after the demise of the town, the local residents formed a Church of Christ congregation and situated a building of that faith in the vicinity of the cemetery. Old Tarrant Cemetery and Old Tarrant Church of Christ are viable social entities even in the late 1900's.

(This was taken from a paper collated in the office of the Texas Historical Commission, Austin, Texas by Deolece Parmelee, Director of Research, February 1975, from four separate papers from the Hopkins County Historical Survey Committee. Kenneth and Sidney Brice and Mattie Mae Long were some of the members at that time.)