Daddy Hollow

Mount Zion, also known as Daddy Hollow, is off U.S. Highway 84 six miles southeast of Fairfield in southeast Freestone County. The site was first settled in the 1850s, and the first church, the Mount Zion Methodist Church, was built in 1854. In 1880 J. L. Moody donated a tract of land two miles west of the original site, and a building was erected that housed a church, school, and Grange hall. Mount Zion had a school that had thirty-three students in 1893 and forty-two students in 1903. In 1916 the school had eighty-seven pupils. A Mount Zion post office, established in 1888 with John C. James as postmaster, was closed in 1891. Land for a cemetery was given by J. C. James and A. P. Vaughn, and a historical marker was placed at the site in 1968. Mount Zion began to grow in the early 1900s, and a new schoolhouse was built in 1912. The school lasted until the 1930s, when it was consolidated with the Fairfield schools. In the 1960s Mount Zion consisted of a cemetery and one dwelling; in the late 1980s the cemetery was still in existence.