AS TIME GOES BY
Wood County History
By LOU MALLORY —
Chairperson, Wood County Historical Commission
More early Wood
County communities 11-26-05
Mount Pisgah
Mount Pisgah was a
rural community at the intersection of FM 49 and
several soil-surfaced roads, two miles west of
Pine Mills and nine miles southeast of Quitman
in southeastern Wood County.
Mount Pisgah
Baptist Church went through several name and
location changes. A Texas Historical Commission
marker for the church has been placed at the
final site of the church. The church was founded
in 1853 in the neighboring community of Holly
Springs as the Holly Springs Baptist Church of
Christ. It then moved to nearby Liberty Hill
(now Pine Mills) before reaching the Mount
Pisgah community in 1860. That year, church
members constructed a one-room sanctuary at
Mount Pisgah. The church was renamed the Mount
Pisgah Baptist Church in 1865 or 1866 and it
remained in the 1860 structure until the 1930s
when it was remodeled.
By 1888, George
Lindley and Joe Shields were operating the
Lindley-Shields sawmill at or near Mount Pisgah.
In 1884, the Mount Pisgah school district was
established. By 1896, it served 95 students. By
1905, 125 students were taught by three
teachers.
During the 1930s,
the community had a number of dwellings, the
school, the church and a cemetery. In 1932, the
school had an enrollment of 135 students in 10
grades. There was also a gravel pit near the
community.
By 1960, Mount
Pisgah had the church, two cemeteries, and a few
widely scattered dwellings along FM 49. By 1988,
all that remained at the site was the church and
one cemetery.
Concord
Concord is on FM
778, two miles northwest of Hainesville and five
and one-half miles southeast of Quitman in south
central Wood County.
Concord was
probably settled in the 1870s and, by the early
1880s, it had a one-teacher school known as the
Concord Academy.
By 1891, the area
had a church, called Hubbard’s Chapel Baptist
Church, named for the settler Hubbard Moseley
(or Mosley), who donated land to the church.
In 1896, 76 white
students and 38 black students were taught by
two teachers in one-room schools. By 1932, 77
white students attended classes in nine grades
taught by three teachers, and 45 black students
attended classes in seven grades taught by one
teacher.
A few years later,
the Concord schools closed and the community had
just the church and a number of scattered
dwellings. By 1960, a single dwelling and the
church remained at the site. By the late 1970s,
several more dwellings were noted in this
vicinity.
The above
information in available at The Handbook of
Texas Online, a joint project of The General
Libraries at the University of Texas at Austin
and the Texas State Historical Association.