Lanham Mill Community

Duane's take

The official marker tells it this way, and I'm just gonna do it justice — here's the story of Lanham Mill Community, out of Somervell County. Sometime around 1870, William and Mary E. Lanham packed up their family and came to Texas from Tennessee.

They found their spot at the confluence of the Paluxy River and White Bluff Creek — a piece of ground that was, at that time, part of Hood County. They bought land, put down roots, and started farming. Now William Lanham wasn't the kind of man to stay quiet when something needed doing.

In 1875, he was one of 406 citizens who signed a petition to the State Legislature — a petition that led to the creation of Somervell County out of portions of Hood County. Four hundred and six names on that document. William Lanham's was one of them.

By 1877, Lanham and a partner named T. J. Hamick owned a grist mill sitting right on the Paluxy River, about halfway between Glen Rose and Paluxy.

Then around 1881, they built a cotton gin alongside it. A mill, a gin, a going concern — the kind of operation that draws people, and people bring community with them. Farms spread out around it.

Churches went up. A public school opened. And folks started burying their dead in a community cemetery nearby.

The land for that cemetery wasn't formally deeded until 1893, but the headstones tell a different story — burials were already happening there as early as 1879. The ground was claimed long before the paperwork caught up. Lanham and Hamick kept that mill and gin running year after year.

And then, in 1898, a fire destroyed the entire facility. The whole operation — gone. The community that had grown up around all that activity gradually declined in the early twentieth century.

By 1947, the school was closed. What's left now is the Lanham Mill Cemetery. The last physical remnant of a once-thriving rural community that a Tennessee family, a petition, a grist mill, and a cotton gin had called into being.

The years pass, the buildings fall or burn, but the cemetery keeps the record — quiet, patient, and still out there on that Somervell County land.

What the marker says

William and Mary E. Lanham and their family came to Texas from Tennessee about 1870. They purchased land and settled on a farm at the confluence of the Paluxy River and White Bluff Creek in what was at that time Hood County. William Lanham was one of 406 citizens who signed the 1875 petition to the State Legislature that led to the creation of Somervell County out of portions of Hood County. By 1877 Lanham and a partner, T. J. Hamick, owned a grist mill located on the Paluxy River about halfway between Glen Rose and Paluxy. They built a cotton gin about 1881, and continued in business until a fire destroyed the entire facility in 1898. The area around the mill operation became known as the Lanham Mill community. In addition to the mill and gin, the community included farms, churches, a public school, and a community cemetery. Although land for the cemetery was not formally deeded until 1893, headstones reveal that burials occurred here as early as 1879. The community gradually declined in the early 20th century, and by 1947 the school was closed. The Lanham Mill Cemetery remains as the last physical remnant of a once-thriving rural community. (1997)