Thornton Church Community

Duane's take

Here's how the marker tells it, and here's how I'll tell it to you. Back in 1858, a wagon train rolled out of Mississippi headed for Trinity County, Texas. Among those families was James D.

Thornton, born in 1807, making the long haul with his kin toward country where friends and relatives had already put down roots. They weren't going in blind. There were people waiting on them, people who had come before and found something worth staying for.

So the Thorntons came, and they stayed. A farming community took shape around that spot, and at the heart of it, James D. Thornton donated the land for a church and a school.

That right there tells you something about a man. When you give the ground for the place where your neighbors worship and your children learn, you're not just passing through. You're planting yourself.

The community that grew up around that church carried the Thornton name, and it carried on for a good long while. Farming was the principal economic base, season after season, generation after generation. It held together through a lot.

Then came World War II, and after that the population began to decline, the way it did in so many small Texas communities when the wider world came calling and didn't always send people back. James D. Thornton himself, born in 1807, was gone by sometime in the 1870s.

But the Thornton Church Cemetery is still there, holding the many area pioneers who made that community what it was. The land he gave kept them, long after everything else moved on.

What the marker says

James D. Thornton (1807-c.1870s) came to this area with his family in 1858. Traveling in a wagon train with other families from their Mississippi home, the Thorntons joined friends and relatives who had preceded them to Trinity County. A farming community was established, and much of life was centered around the Thornton Church and School, built on land donated by James D. Thornton. Farming continued to be the principal economic base until population began to decline after World War II. Many area pioneers are interred in the Thornton Church Cemetery.