Marystown

Marystown was ten miles north of Cleburne in northern Johnson County. The first Anglo-American settlers in the area, the Reverend J. S. Wilshire and his family, arrived and established a farm in 1853, and other settlers followed soon after, drawn by the plentiful timber and constant water of Quil Miller Creek. The community, however, was not organized until after the Civil War, when Thomas W. Hollingsworth, an area landowner, established a flour mill and a mercantile business. Other settlers arrived and additional businesses opened. Hollingsworth called the developing community Marysville, in honor of his wife, Mary, and applied for a post office under that name, but a Marysville post office already existed in the state, so the settlement became Marystown. The Marystown post office operated from 1874 to 1901. By 1879 the community had 100 residents, two grocery stores, a general merchandise store, a cotton gin, a gristmill, a flour mill, a blacksmith shop, a school, and two churches, one of them a community church built by Hollingsworth. In 1881 the railroad bypassed Marystown, and residents moved to the nearby rail town of Burleson. By the early 1890s only a general merchandise store, a flour mill, a cotton gin, and the post office remained open in Marystown. For the 1896–97 school year, one teacher taught eighty-seven pupils. By 1900–01 the school had 117 students and two teachers. Marystown ceased to exist as an organized community sometime thereafter.