Stranger Community, Cemetery and Churches

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. This is the story of Stranger, Falls County, and how a place with that name came to mean home to a whole lot of people. Before 1850, this stretch of Texas was known as Blue Ridge.

A man named Thomas McKissick Garrett had land out here, and he gave some of it, two miles to the northeast, so the community could build a school, a church, and what became Garrett Cemetery. Now, when Garrett died in 1862, his estate settlement pulled that property back out of public use. The community needed a new home.

So David Barclay stepped up, and so did two of Thomas Garrett's own grandsons, James Franklin Erskine and Thomas Jasper Erskine, and together they donated this very location. A new start, a new site. And then came the name.

Around 1870, a visiting Frenchman suggested it. Stranger. Nobody on that marker says why he said it, and the marker doesn't explain it, so we'll just let that sit there the way a good mystery ought to sit.

Buildings for a Methodist-Presbyterian Union Church and a Baptist church were conducted in July 1869, and right there in those new sanctuaries, the first school classes were held too. The community was doing double duty before the ink was dry. By 1877, the Union Academy and the Union School had grown into public free schools, and by 1902 a separate schoolhouse had been constructed a quarter mile to the northeast.

In its day, Stranger had a cotton gin, a stock dipping vat, doctors, general stores, a blacksmith shop, a stagecoach inn, and mills. A real town, a living town. But time has a way of thinning things out.

Today only the cemetery and the church buildings remain. Those sanctuaries, where services were conducted all the way until 1960, now open their doors twice a year for homecoming. A Frenchman passing through gave this place a name that sounds like loneliness, and the people who built it turned it into belonging.

What the marker says

This community was originally settled as Blue Ridge prior to 1850. Thomas McKissick Garrett donated land (two miles northeast) for the establishment of a school, church, and Garrett Cemetery. With the estate settlement following his death in 1862, the property was removed from public use. This location was donated by David Barclay and two grandsons of Thomas Garrett, James Franklin Erskine and Thomas Jasper Erskine. The name Stranger was suggested by a visiting Frenchman about 1870. Buildings for a Methodist-Presbyterian Union Church and a Baptist church were conducted in July 1869. The first school classes were conducted in the new sanctuaries. By 1877 the Union Academy and Union School had become public free schools. A separate schoolhouse (1/4 mile northeast) was constructed in 1902. Stranger once had a cotton gin, stock dipping vat, doctors, general stores, blacksmith shop, stagecoach inn, and mills, but only the cemetery and church buildings remain. The sanctuaries, where services were conducted until 1960, are now used for the biannual homecoming activities. (1980)