Snapshots of more early county settlements

Calvary, Texas
Calvary was located on FM 779 three miles northeast of Golden in southwestern Wood County.

Some reports state that a Calvary community existed as early as 1888. By 1896, a four-teacher school called Bell Founte (also spelled Bellefont and Bell Font) was located in the area and had 120 students. Ten years later, its enrollment had dropped to 85.
 

In the 1930s, the Bell Font school district had 59 students in nine grades. Though the community was not indicated on the 1936 county highway map, newspaper accounts from that time refer to a community named Bellfonte and a “Calvery” Church.
 

By 1959, the community was called Calvary. It was the site of Calvary Church and scattered dwellings. By 1988, the settlement had just one business.
 

White Oak, Texas
White Oak, also known as Singleton Crossing, Mill Prairie, Black Jack, and Mapes, was a rural community three miles west of Yantis on FM 17.
 

By the 1860s, there was a school at a community known variously as Singleton Crossing, Black jack or Mill prairie.
 

Reportedly, the short-lived Mapes community was established there because of a political feud. After the 1892 presidential campaign, Democrats W.R.D. Willett, Billy Gamblin, J.C. Mapes, and others petitioned for a post office for the small community to be located outside the generally Populist Yantis.
 

For a brief time after its post office opened in 1893, the Mapes community had a school, a church, two gins, and several stores.

These included a store that J.C. Mapes, who also served as postmaster, ran out of the post office.
 

Mapes sold his store to Willett, who moved it, along with one of his gins, back to Yantis. Only a log church was left in the Mapes community.
 

In 1905, a one-room school called White Oak had 54 students taught by one teacher. By 1932, White Oak had 70 students in eight grades.
 

The community was named for the nearby White Oak branch, which was later inundated by the Lake Fork reservoir. In the 1940s, highway maps show only a few widely scattered dwellings in the area. By 1959, the site was marked by the White Oak church, which continued to the shown on highway maps through 1988.
 

Holly Springs, Texas
Holly Springs was seven miles northeast of Pine Mills (called Liberty Hill at the time) and probably near Lake Gunstream in east central Wood County.
 

The Holly Springs community was named after the nearby natural springs of that name and was one of the earliest communities in Wood County. Peter Magnus Gunstream was a Swedish immigrant, one of Wood County’s first county commissioners and the founder of Holly Springs. He petitioned the government for a post office and the community received one in 1852. Gunstream served as postmaster until the post office was discontinued in 1866. Local sources said Gunstream also grew what may have been the first sorghum cane crop west of the Mississippi. He also owned the nearby Gunstream Mill. He built it in 1854 with an overshot waterwheel, eight feet in diameter that he brought to the county from Jefferson. Jefferson was the major mercantile center for the region during these decades when it could be reached via various waterways and oxen.
 

Gunstream’s mill cut the lumber for the county seat’s first courthouse. By 1869 Gunstream was also operating a cotton gin at his place. In 1853 the community had formed the Holly Springs Baptist Church of Christ, one of the oldest in Wood County. Its first meeting was held in November of that year at the home of its first pastor, John Donathan Jackson Davis.
 

By 1854 the church was holding meetings at the Liberty Hill Meeting House, also known as Liberty Hill Chapel. This was probably located at the place that later became known as Pine Mills.
 

Around 1860, the church moved to the Mount Pisgah community, although it was called the Holy Springs Church until 1865 or 1866. By 1857 Holly Springs and the nearby community of Little Hope shared a schoolhouse southwest of Gunstream’s home. The first teacher was said to be 15-year-old Emily Smith, who taught 15 students.
 

No mention of a Holly Springs school district was made in 1884, when Wood County was divided into public school districts. No further information is available on Holly Springs, which did not appear on the 1936 county highway map.