Pin Hook

Pin Hook is on Farm Road 195 eighteen miles northeast of Paris in northeastern Lamar County. The first settlement in the area took place on Little Pine Creek before 1836, some of it on grants from Arkansas Territory. Though Pin Hook appears on early land deeds and the Pin Hook School District was organized in the 1860s, the origin of the name is unknown. One story is that it was named after a crook in the road passing through town. The name Pin Hook was also applied in the late 1830s to the area where Paris was later platted; the name may have been borrowed by the present Pin Hook community after Paris became the Lamar county seat in 1844. The Pin Hook school, a one-room log cabin for White children, stood on a tract adjoining the present graveyard to the south. That site was abandoned in the 1890s, and a new one-room frame building was erected half a mile north. In 1896 the school had one teacher and fifty-seven students. Over some objections the new school was named Faulkner, after a prominent citizen of the county. Around 1900 the community had two cotton gins, several stores, a gristmill, and a blacksmith shop. It later had a garage and at one time also had a baseball team. For three-quarters of a century, in increasing rivalry, the school was officially called Faulkner and the community popularly called Pin Hook. In 1946 the Pin Hook Home Demonstration Club decided that the name of the community should also be changed to Faulkner. The town sign was switched periodically by residents until December 1988, when the Lamar County Commissioners Court officially designated the community Pin Hook. The town had a population of forty-eight in 1990.