Valley Creek

Valley Creek, a community near a creek by the same name on what is now Farm Road 896, twelve miles southwest of Bonham, was the principal settlement in southwestern Fannin County in the 1870s. On June 3, 1869, Howard L. Parmele bought from John B. Seaman and Charles C. Peck the land on which the settlement would be located. All parties were residents of New York City. The land was purchased to establish a Presbyterian Church, U.S.A, mission colony. Parmele was married to a sister of Samuel F. B. Morse, the inventor of the telegraph. The Presbyterian colony consisted of eleven families; the head of each family was trained in a trade or profession. Soon after the community was established, a school was built. Classes were taught for three months in the winter, and Sunday school classes were held weekly. Parmele owned and operated a general mercantile store, a sawmill, and a cotton gin in Valley Creek. There he milled and shipped large quantities of wagon parts, house blocks, and street paving blocks made from bois d'arc wood. A United States post office was opened in Valley Creek in 1875 in Parmele's store, with Parmele as postmaster. In 1880 Valley Creek had 200 residents, but that year the Denison and Southeastern Railway was built through southwestern Fannin County three miles south of Valley Creek. By 1882 most of the residents and businesses of Valley Creek had moved to the new town of Leonard on the railroad, though there was a Valley Creek post office as late as 1899. A congregation of the Presbyterian Church, U.S.A, had been organized at Valley Creek in 1875; in 1885 this church consolidated with the Leonard Presbyterian Church. The only building on the former site of Valley Creek in 1989 was the Valley Creek Baptist Church. At that time the Valley Creek Cemetery was still used. By 1989 an estimated population of twelve lived in the area of Valley Creek. The population was twelve in 2000.