Dove Community

Duane's take

The marker's the one telling this tale, and I'm just the voice it found — here's how it reads out on the road through Tarrant County. Now settle in, because this story starts with a treaty and ends with a lake, and there's a good long stretch of Texas life in between. In 1843, the Bird's Fort Treaty between the Republic of Texas and several Native American tribes swung this whole area open for new settlers.

Families came rolling in from Platt County, Missouri, and from other corners of the United States, and they planted themselves right here in the Eastern Cross Timbers. They called their community Cross Timbers — the place that would become Grapevine. February of 1846, the folks living on the northern edge of that settlement did something that communities do when they mean to stay: they organized a church.

The Lonesome Dove Baptist Church, formally gathered in the fall of that same year. Then in 1847, the members built themselves a long log structure — a proper house of worship — about four miles northwest of Grapevine, deep in the Eastern Cross Timbers. Now here's a man worth pausing on: the Reverend John Allen Freeman.

He served the Lonesome Dove School as its schoolteacher and the Lonesome Dove Church as its pastor, both at once, for ten years. Ten years of sermon and arithmetic, and the community held together around him. The Lonesome Dove School itself got its start in 1846, same year as the church — this was a people who believed in tending to the soul and the mind at the same time.

In 1849, the state legislature created Tarrant County, named Birdville as the county seat, and the U.S. Army established Fort Worth as a frontier fort. Things were taking shape all around.

By the 1870s, a small village called Dove had grown up out of all that early planting. A general store and post office set up at the intersection of Dove and Lonesome Dove roads, and Dove became a prosperous farming center — cotton, melon, dairy. The kind of place where the land and the people had figured each other out.

The community had its touchstones: Lonesome Dove Cemetery, just north of the old church site; the Dove Branch swimming hole, which served for recreation and for baptisms, which is a particular kind of Texas multipurposing; and Dove School, which eventually consolidated with other area schools to form the Carroll Common School District in 1919. But time and water have a way of reshaping even the most settled places. The federal government completed Lake Grapevine in 1952, and that lake required a number of families to relocate from the northern portion of the Dove Community.

Just like that, homes and histories went under or moved on. Then in 1979, the City of Southlake annexed Dove, and the village as it had been was folded into something larger. Still — and this is where the marker plants its flag — evidence of that early community remains.

The cemetery, the roads with their names, the memory of a log church built four miles out in the Cross Timbers. Some places don't disappear. They just get quieter about who they are.

What the marker says

The 1843 Bird's Fort Treaty between the Republic of Texas and several Native American tribes opened this area for new immigrants. In the ensuing years, a number of families from Platt County, Missouri and other parts of the United States migrated to this area and established the Cross Timbers community (now Grapevine). In February 1846, residents living on the northern edge of the community organized the Lonesome Dove Baptist Church in the fall of that year. In 1847, members built a long log structure approximately four miles northwest of Grapevine in the Eastern Cross Timbers. The Lonesome Dove School also began in 1846, and the Rev. John Allen Freeman served as schoolteacher as well as church pastor for ten years. In 1849, the state legislature created Tarrant County, with Birdville as county seat, and the U.S. Army established Fort Worth as a frontier fort. The small village of Dove developed by the 1870s. A general store and post office operated at the intersection of Dove and Lonesome Dove roads, and the community became a prosperous farming center for cotton, melon and dairy production. Included as part of the community were Lonesome Dove Cemetery just north of the church site, the Dove Branch swimming hole, used for recreation as well as baptisms, and Dove School, which consolidated with other area schools to form the Carroll Common School District in 1919. The federal government completed Lake Grapevine in 1952, requiring a number of families to relocate from the northern portion of the Dove Community. In 1979, the City of Southlake annexed Dove, but evidence of the early area community remains. (2006)