PORTER SPRINGS, TEXAS

Porter Springs (Porter's Springs), at the junction of Farm roads 2967 and 132, ten miles southwest of Crockett in western Houston County, was settled just before the Civil War.

A school was founded there around 1870, and the first church, the Bethlehem Baptist Church, was organized before 1877. A post office was established in 1895 and named for postmaster James McIntosh Porter.

By 1896 Porter Springs had two churches, a general store, a public school, a cotton gin, a drugstore, and an estimated population of fifty. During the mid-1930s Porter Springs consisted of three churches, schools for black students and for white, and several businesses; the estimated population in 1936 was fifty. After World War II the school was closed, but the population was reported at fifty through 1990.

In the early 1990s Porter Springs was a dispersed rural community with three churches, a high school, an elementary school, a cemetery, and number of houses.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Armistead Albert Aldrich, The History of Houston County, Texas (San Antonio: Naylor, 1943). Houston County Historical Commission, History of Houston County, Texas, 1687-1979 (Tulsa, Oklahoma: Heritage, 1979). Houston County Cemeteries (Crockett, Texas: Houston County Historical Commission, 1977; 3d ed. 1987).

Eliza H. Bishop

Houston County, Tex - TXGenWeb Project Site

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