Red Hill

Red Hill was a rural community in southeastern Van Zandt County twenty miles southeast of Canton and one mile north of State Highway 64. It was settled by the family of John Piles, who obtained a land grant in 1841 and was one of the county's first 100 taxpayers. The first local church and a school started by S. W. Murphy after the Civil War were located on cemetery land; the first burial was in 1856. White school enrollment reached fifty-seven in 1904; Black enrollment at nearby Pleasant Hill School reached thirty-six in that year. By the 1950s the schools had become part of the Van Independent School District. In 1987 a cemetery and a log cabin built by town founder William Willis in 1848 served as a local landmark, but population estimates were unavailable.