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HEMMING, TEXAS
A North Texas
Ghost Town
Cooke County
15 miles S of Gainesville
Detailed driving instructions not available.
Population:
0
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A
letter from former Cook Countian L. D. Clark, prompted this entry
for Hemming. His letter:
"I was looking over what you have about ghost towns in Cooke County.
There is another one whose traces may almost have disappeared by now:
Hemming. It lay about 15 miles SSE of Gainesville,
almost in Denton County. There can't be much left of it. I was last
there in 1950 or '51, and found only a few foundations standing. The
whole town was blown away by a tornado around 1900 and was never rebuilt.
I grew up a few miles north of the site. My father always called that
storm " the Hemming cyclone." - L. D. Clark, Smithville, Texas
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1906
Postal map showing Hemming, Pilot Point, Mustang, Aubrey and Cosner
Courtesy The General Land Office |
History in a Pecan Shell
From facts contained in the Handbook of Texas:
Hemming was named in 1890 to honor Gainesville banker C. C. Hemming
who donated land for the fledgling community's first school.
1894 was a landmark year for Hemming with the establishment of a store
/ post office and a cotton gin. After 1905 mail was rerouted from
Pilot Point and the post office closed. Two additional stores were
opened between 1900 and 1905.
At its zenith, Hemming's population was 125 - a healthy figure for
the times. Hemming became the cotton-processing center for
its region and it reportedly shipped between 1,000 to 1,500 bales
annually.
In 1907 a tornado hit Hemming, killing seven and demolishing nearly
the entire town. An attempt was made to rebuild, but the damage was
too severe. The gin closed in the early 20s and in 1929 the school
consolidated with other small schools. Material from the Hemming school
was recycled into a Union Grove School District building.
Hemming was reduced to only a church and a few residences by the mid-1930s.
After WWII the population was reportedly reduced to ten.
It suffered the cruelest blow any small town can receive when it was
removed from county maps in the 1980s. |
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Gainesville
&
Cooke County
(Arcadia Publishing) |
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