Sitting atop a
scenic hilltop in southwestern Henderson County, Science Hill lasted only a few
decades, but its reputation as a center of education is well-remembered by descendants
of its founders and builders.
So is its violence in the early days of
the Civil War.
The earliest settlers arrived at the hill in 1846. D.M.Thompson
and J.D. Jaggers built the community’s first industry, a cotton gin, and carried
the cotton as far away as Navasota
and Calvert.
But
the town’s greatest step forward was the establishment of the Science Hill Academy
in 1848 through the efforts of Andrew J. Fowler, Robert Hodge, John Tanner and
other members of the Science Hill Masonic Lodge.
Located on the lodge’s
ground floor, the academy was ahead of its time for the 1850s with courses that
included orthography, Latin, Greek and natural sciences.
Four well-known
ministers lived at Science Hill, using their leadership skills and intellect to
shape the community. They were Hezekiah Mitchum, who organized the First Methodist
Church of Henderson County in 1852; Robert Hodge, who organized the First Presbyterian
of Henderson County in 1855; Harrison Rushing, another Methodist minister; and
Wes Jackson, a Baptist preacher.
Science Hill Academy lasted only until
1872, the result of the Civil War and its aftermath.
With the eruption
of the war, the town found itself caught up in issues such as slavery, which in
the 1860s provided the labor on East
Texas cotton
plantations. As the war exploded, the plantation owners saw their prosperity facing
extinction.
As fires erupted in a number of East
Texas cities and communities at the peak of the Texas
secession crisis, a violent mob rode into southwestern Henderson County and killed
three men suspected of being involved in a conspiracy against Science Hill.
It
was reported that a slave named Bob belonging to a slaveowner was meeting with
two men from Tennessee Colony, who had been harboring escaped slaves and selling
liquor to them.
During
a community “inquiry,” Bob supposedly said the two white men had supplied him
with poison and phosphorous matches and told him the time had come for the blacks
to “rise up against their masters.”
Bob was quickly found guilty in a
hastily-arranged trial and hanged. The two other men suffered the same fate.
Following the Civil War, Science Hill’s fortune skidded. Its post office, established
in 1859, was closed in 1866.
Science Hill’s families began moving away
from the hilltop. By 1936, there was nothing left to identify the site of Science
Hill except for Patterson Cemetery, which was organized in 1861 on a plot of land
owned by John Patterson.
Bob Bowman's
East Texas
June 19, 2011 Column.
A weekly column syndicated in 109 East Texas newspapers |
