Union Hill

Duane's take

The official marker tells this one, and I'm just the voice carrying it down the road. Now, Washington County has got itself a ghost of a town sitting quiet out here, and the story of how it rose and how it faded is worth your time. It starts with the Hugh and Lucy Kerr family, coming all the way from Tennessee in 1831.

They put down roots and started what folks came to call the Kerr settlement. That's your foundation — one family, one piece of Texas ground, and the particular stubbornness it takes to build something from nothing. Then along comes W.

B. McClellan, born 1804, died 1880, making his way down from North Carolina. In 1844, he bought land from a W.

P. Kerr and went about starting a second settlement right alongside the first. Two families, two origins, one place beginning to take real shape.

By 1850, Union Academy was operating. That's a school, and a school means a community that intends to stick around. Then in 1854, the Union Hill Post Office opened — and once a town gets a post office, it's got a name and an address and a reason to show up on a map.

Mrs. Lucy Kerr, bless her, gave acreage at this very spot for a Methodist church. And you know how it goes — a church draws people, and people draw institutions.

A Masonic lodge followed, and a school came to share the site. Stores went up to the west, a hotel, other buildings. Union Hill wasn't just a settlement anymore.

It was a town, and at its peak it counted eight hundred souls. Eight hundred people. Out here.

But here's where the story turns, and it turns the way so many Texas towns turn — not with a fire or a flood, but with a railroad. After 1870, Union Hill started dwindling. The railroad facilities down in Burton, just two miles south, began pulling the local businesses away one by one.

The town was unincorporated, which meant nobody could quite hold it together when the gravity shifted. What the Kerr family built in 1831, what McClellan added to in 1844, what eight hundred people once called home — it quieted down to nearly nothing. Two miles.

That's all the distance it took. And now the marker stands where Mrs. Lucy Kerr's church once anchored a town that had every intention of lasting forever.

What the marker says

The Hugh and Lucy Kerr family from Tennessee started the Kerr settlement in this area in 1831. W. B. McClellan (1804-80) from North Carolina bought land from W. P. Kerr in 1844 and began a second settlement. Union Academy was operating by 1850. Union Hill Post Office opened in 1854. Mrs. Lucy Kerr gave acreage at this point for a Methodist church; Masonic lodge and school soon shared the site. Stores, a hotel, and other buildings stood to the west. Unincorporated, the town of 800 dwindled after 1870, as railroad facilities in Burton (2 mi. south) drew away the local businesses.