The late Dr. Howard Williams, chair of the Orange County Historical Commission for decades, had a goal of marking every community in the county with a Texas Historical Marker. Sunday, the marker for Mauriceville will be dedicated at the middle school. The dedication will be from 2 to 4 p.m. and the public is invited.
The suffix “ville” is a name for a place and the president of the Orange and Northwestern Railroad, Leopold Miller, named it for his son. The community developed at the intersection of two railroads built for the timber industry. The Texarkana and Fort Smith Railroad was built in 1898 and the Orange and Northwestern crossed through in 1902.
Nancy Peveto, a member of the Orange County Historical Commission, did the research for the marker and wrote the history submitted to the state.
The business community was sparked when J.P. Hilliard built the first general mercantile and feed store. The store had a bank set up in the corner that was named the Boys Saving Bank. When President Franklin D. Roosevelt closed all banks in 1933 during the Great Depression, the little Mauriceville bank never re-opened.
Hilliard was a man with wide interests. He was also the first school teacher in Mauriceville and he led the music at the Baptist Church. A U.S. Post Office was opened in the community on November, 1906, and Hilliard was the first postmaster.
Settlers were in the area before the railroads brought a formal name. Peveto wrote that Gustave Frederick was the earliest Anglo settler in the area. Other pioneer Anglos were Silas Bland and W.W. Wilkinson.
The business district grew in the early 20th Century and included a two-story station house and a two-story hotel. John D. and Mary Elizabeth Warrell owned the hotel, which was on the north side of the tracks. Their customers were mainly railroad workers and teachers. Passenger trains stopped every day and freight trains would stop overnight on the side tracks.
Peveto reports Lee Willey had a barber shop next to the hotel. The business strip also had a gasoline filling station and a house that belonged to George Shannon.
At one point, Hilliard sold the mercantile. Half went to his brother-in-law, W. Wilkinson, and the other half went to W.T. Dunn and Grady Tillery. The name was changed to Wilkinson, Tillery and Dunn. Peveto said the owners helped families eat when they didn’t have money and the store ran charge accounts.
The first school was named Hobson for a veteran of the Spanish-American War. The first trustees were Josh Bland, Ralsh Cooper and John Frederick. The Texas Legislature made Mauriceville and independent school district in 1913 and the school moved to its current site. The school had four classrooms with three teachers and the principal. Peveto said the school had 250 students by 1918.
In 1929, the Mauriceville Independent School District added the Lemonville and Cherry Grove (Gist) schools. Q.B. Culpepper became the superintendent in 1931 and 11 grades were taught for the first time. After continual expansion, the Mauriceville district joined with the Little Cypress district in 1969 to form the Little Cypress-Mauriceville Consolidated Independent School District.
Peveto said as lumber mills closed over the years, the trains quit stopping in Mauriceville. But even today, trains travel through. The 2010 U.S. Census had the once-tiny railroad town at a population of 3,252 people. – Margaret Toal, KOGT-
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