Spring Hill

Medill, on Farm Road 2648 thirteen miles northeast of Paris in northeastern Lamar County, was first settled around the time of the Civil War. It was originally known as Spring Hill, for a spring on the John Davis headright, within which it was located. A post office operated there under the name Gibson from 1881 to 1901, when it was discontinued. When the post office was reestablished the same year, the community was renamed Medill, in honor of William Medill, assistant postmaster general in 1845. A one-teacher school was in operation by the turn of the century; in 1906 it had an enrollment of twenty-nine. By 1914 Medill had three general stores, a post office, a cotton gin, a school, and a number of houses. In the late 1930s it had 100 residents and three businesses. Subsequently it steadily declined, and by the early 1970s only a church, a cemetery, and a few scattered houses remained. In 1990 Medill was a dispersed rural community with an estimated population of fifty. The population remained the same in 2000.