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The History of Wood
County
Caddo Indians lived in the East Texas timberlands centuries before the
first Europeans entered the area. The area of Wood County was first
explored in 1788 when Pedro Vial made his way from Natchitoches,
Louisiana, to San Antonio. Several Spanish land grants were issued for
land in the county, but the county was not extensively settled until
after the Texas Revolution. One of the first white men to settle
permanently in Wood County was Martin Varner, who lived southeast of the
site of present Hainesville. Webster, the first real community in the
area, was established by 1845. In 1850 Wood County was demarked from Van
Zandt County and organized. Quitman was established to serve as the
county seat. The county was named for George T. Wood, governor of Texas
from 1847 to 1849. In 1870 the new Rains County took a section of
western Wood County. Wood County was predominantly settled by people who
came from the southern United States. These settlers brought slaves with
them and began to reestablish the kind of slaveholding,
cotton-plantation society they had known in their former homes. In 1850
Wood County had seventeen slaves. By 1860 it had a white population of
3,963 and 923 slaves, and produced 1,108 bales of cotton. The coming of
secession and the Civil War showed the mixed feelings that many citizens
of Wood County had toward both subjects. In 1861 the county voted in
favor of secession by a majority of 70 percent, yet the two men elected
by the county to serve as its delegates to the Secession Convention,
John D. Rains and A. P. Shuford, both voted against the secession
ordinance. Emory Rains, state senator from Wood County, was one of the
signers of the public address asking the citizens of Texas to vote
against secession. After the Civil War began Wood County supported the
Confederacy with men and material goods. Defeat brought military
government and Reconstruction to the county. Reconstruction was
effectively ended in 1873 with the election of men from the Democratic
party on both the county and state level.
Wood County remained during the years 1870 to 1920 as it was during the
antebellum years, overwhelmingly agricultural and rural. During these
fifty years both the population and the number of farms grew-from 6,894
and 756, respectively, to all-time highs of 27,707 and 4,333. During
those years corn and cotton were the main crops. In 1920 the county
produced 1,033,231 bushels of corn, an all-time high. The valuation of
county farms stood at almost $19 million. Wood County enjoyed the
benefits of railroad transportation facilities during the period from
1870 to 1920, but even with this advantage, its nonagricultural economy
grew slowly. In 1920 there were only twenty-five manufacturing
establishments in the county, and they employed 108 people. Even so, the
railroads did bring growth. In 1873 the Texas and Pacific Railway came
through southern Wood County on its way from Longview to Dallas. A
junction was formed with the International and Great Northern Railroad
at a tiny village named Sodom, which had about twenty residents. Sodom
was renamed Mineola and by the 1990s had a population of 4,321, a
municipal water system, a telephone exchange, and a privately owned
power plant. Mineola was also the site of one of the largest box and
basket factories in the South. The East Line and Red River Railroad came
through Winnsboro, in northeastern Wood County, in 1876 as the tracks
were being laid from Jefferson to Greenville. The town grew from a
population of 333 in 1880 to 2,184 in 1920.
The years of the Great Depression and World War II
started long-term changes in Wood County. The county’ s population began
declining, dropping from 24,183 in 1930 to 17,653 in 1960 before the
trend began to reverse itself. The number of farms also began to
decline; there were almost 3,000 fewer farms in 1959 than there were in
1920. Unemployment became a problem during the depression years. In 1930
only 2 percent of the people could not find work. In 1935 the county had
1,022 workers on public relief. By 1940 unemployment had reached 13
percent of the county’ s work force. A Civilian Conservation Corps camp
was established near Winnsboro during the early 1930s. The discovery of
oil in 1941 in Wood County was one of several developments that promised
a brighter future. By 1948 the county was producing nearly 25 million
barrels of oil a year and by 1984 had produced a total of nearly one
billion barrels. The automobile transformed the county. In 1922 the
county had forty-nine miles of paved road and 1,000 registered
automobiles. By 1982 there were 1,155 miles of paved road and 24,719
registered vehicles. In 1938 the Rural Electrification Administration
and the Wood County Electric Coop began bringing electricity to the
county’ s rural areas. Telephone service, starting in 1955 with the
Peoples Telephone Coop, was brought into the rural areas. The
educational level of the county’ s citizens also improved. In 1950, 15
percent of those people age twenty-five years or older were high school
graduates. By 1980, however, over 50 percent met this standard. By the
1970s the population began to increase again, growing from 18,589 in
1970 to 24,697 in 1980. The county moved from an agricultural base
dependent on farming to one that relied on beef and dairy cattle. The
nonagricultural economy became more important, with manufacturing,
retail trade, and service concerns accounting for 2,102 jobs in 1970 and
3,104 in 1982.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Wood County, 1850-1900 (Quitman, Texas:
Wood County Historical Society, 1976).
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