Freeman Town

Quakertown was an African-American community inside the city of Denton in central Denton County. The boundaries of the community were Withers Street on the north, McKinney Street to the south, Vine Street on the east, and Oakland Avenue on the west. Quakertown, most likely so named for the northern Quakers who aided freedmen in the early years of Reconstruction, began to form as a separate community within the Denton city limits by the mid-1870s. Black families from Freeman Town, the first black settlement in Denton, relocated to Quakertown after a black school was opened there in 1878. The first school building burned down in 1913 and was rebuilt in 1915. By the 1880s Quakertown had a number of stores and churches, and several communal organizations, including the Masons, the Odd Fellows, and the Knights of Pythias, also served as centers of community life. E. D. Moten, the only black doctor in Denton in the early 1900s, lived in the community. In March 1921 a petition was presented at the Denton city commission meeting to hold a bond election to purchase all the land encompassed by Quakertown and turn it into a city park. The bond election passed, and in May 1922 the city of Denton began to purchase Quakertown properties. Residents were given the choice of selling their land and property outright or having their houses moved to Solomon Hill, a site on the other side of the railroad tracks selected by the city. Quakertown soon disappeared.