Hampton

Hampton, two miles west of the site of present Chester in far northwestern Tyler County, was a sawmill town around 1900. The community, also called Fleming Station, was named for Daniel Hampton Fleming, a lumberman from Pennsylvania who in 1888 bought a large tract of virgin longleaf pine forest in northwestern Tyler County. The Hampton post office was established in 1898, with D. H. Fleming as postmaster. It closed in 1911, reopened in 1920, and closed again in 1926. The community grew into a busy sawmill town with stores, a post office, a Presbyterian church, a doctor's office, and a boardinghouse operated by the family of John Pope. In 1889 the local mill produced 20,000 board feet daily, and a million feet of lumber stood in the yard. Fleming sold out to his son in 1908 and moved to Deepwater, where he died in 1909. In 1925 the community reported a population of fifty. The lumbermill at Hampton was operated by the Fleming family for nearly thirty years. Hampton was not labeled on the 1947 county highway map.