Aikin Grove

Aikin Grove is a small farming community located on Farm Road 910 about four miles south of Clarksville in south central Red River County. The settlement was established during the latter half of the 1800s and named for the Aikin family. In 1870 a one-room school was built. On March 5, 1897, J. D. Aikin and his wife sold two acres to the Aikin Grove Missionary Baptist Church and to the Methodist Episcopal Church South for use as a cemetery. Residents in the early 1900s included the Hall, Lyons, Perrin, Hubbard, and Aikin families. The community's best known native son, prominent Texas legislator and education advocate A. M. Aikin Jr., was born in 1905. By World War I Aikin Grove had grown to include about 100 families, three stores, churches, and the cemetery. The school was eventually expanded to a four-room structure, and 165 students were enrolled in 1933. The town declined during the second half of the twentieth century, however. Aikin Grove's last store, owned by W. J. Hubbard, closed in 1957. By the mid-1960s the community reported a population of forty. That figure dropped and remained steady at twenty-six from 1970 through 2000. The Baptist church remained active in the area.