China Grove

China Grove, on Farm Road 1256 eight miles south of Canton in Van Zandt County, was probably named for the chinaberry trees near a spring on the John Henry Robertson farm. The community had a post office from 1891 to 1905, three mills and gins by 1892, and two stores at its zenith. In the early 1890s the China Grove school district was divided; China Grove School was moved east and Rock Hill School was moved northwest. China Grove School reached an enrollment of thirty-four in 1905, and Rock Hill had eighty-seven students in 1904. The China Grove Missionary Baptist Church, organized on June 12, 1914, met in China Grove School. Both schools were consolidated with the Bethel Independent School District by the 1950s. At some point there was a saloon west of the community and a park north of the church. State highway maps of 1936 showed a church, a school, and scattered dwellings at China Grove. In 2000 the community contained the church, a volunteer fire department, a trailer business, a gift shop, and a restaurant. Morris Cemetery, on the nearby farm of Elijah Newton Morris west of Denman Crossroads on State Highway 19, dates to 1866.