Mayfield

Mayfield is on Hackberry Creek and State Highway 171 seven miles north of Hillsboro in north central Hill County. By the 1850s, area land was being sold for ranching. The first permanent settlers who arrived after 1865 found a rich prairie land with Hackberry Creek and natural springs for water, which they soon supplemented with wells. Before Mayfield was founded, there were three other communities in the general vicinity: Prairiedale, which had a school, church, and cemetery; McDonald, with a school; and Loveless, better known as Frog Liver, which also had a school. The church that became the Mayfield Baptist Church was originally founded in Prairiedale in 1881, and the building was later moved to Mayfield. Mayfield received its name when the Trinity and Brazos Valley Railway reached the community in 1904. The railroad built a platform on the switch spur for loading cotton, and named it in honor of John Mayfield, a worker at the local cotton gin. In 1912 the schools at Prairiedale, McDonald, and Loveless consolidated in Mayfield. At one time the school had 278 pupils, but by the time it closed in 1954, it had two teachers and twelve students. After it closed, its building was used as a community center. Along with the community's school, its grocery store, gas station, and cotton gin closed in the 1950s. In the 1980s Mayfield, a dispersed rural community, was still shown on the county highway map. By 2000 the population was twelve.