Flowery Mountain

The Flowery Mountain community was on the elevated expanse of land in northwestern Nacogdoches County known as Flowery Mountain. On January 13, 1835, this land was granted to Henry Brewer, who with his wife and their six children traveled from Mississippi to settle in Texas. Rev. Washington Wiggins Albritton moved to Texas in 1869 and was one of the first preachers at the Redland Baptist Church on Flowery Mountain. The mountain was first called Brewer's Mountain, but Albritton renamed it for the wildflowers-including wild plum, dogwood, redbud, black and red haw, granddaddy greybeard, and others-that grew around his church, The church also doubled as a school, which in 1897 had thirty-six students. The school was closed around 1898–99. In 1862 Rufus McClain and Andrew Hayter developed an iron foundry to process iron ore from Flowery Mountain, but the business was abandoned with the outbreak of the Civil War. The population at Flowery Mountain peaked about 1936. After World War II its inhabitants began to move to the cities for jobs.