Bedford

Bedford, bisected by State Highway 121, is northeast of Fort Worth in the northeast quadrant of Tarrant County, north of the West Fork of the Trinity River. The first settlers arrived in the late 1840s in the Bedford area, located strategically between Fort Worth and Grapevine. Milton Moore of North Carolina established the community's first school in his log cabin in 1861 with a dozen or more students. A settlement developed in the 1870s, after Weldon Bobo moved from Tennessee and established a general store and gristmill to serve area farmers. Bobo and a group of farmers agreed to name their community Bedford, after the county in Tennessee from which many of them had come. Bobo, Moore, and others founded New Hope Christian Church in 1874, and the first official post office opened in Bobo's home in 1877. In the 1880s and 1890s Bedford was a booming town, with a population of 1,000 or possibly even 2,000 that surpassed that of all other Tarrant County towns except Fort Worth. In addition to the alleged twenty-eight businesses that served the town, the community was also the home of Bedford College, founded in 1882. The college, which was something of a combination high school-junior college, survived until fire gutted the building in 1893.

Adapted from the official Handbook of Texas, a state encyclopedia developed by the Texas State Historical Association (TSHA). It is an authoritative source of trusted historical records.