GROVE HILL, TEXAS (Fannin County). Grove Hill, also known as Oak Hill, is on Farm Road 1553 twelve miles south of Bonham and four miles northeast of Leonard in southwestern Fannin County. Grove Hill is reportedly the oldest settlement in that part of the county. In 1844 George M. Smith, originally of Georgia, came to the Grove Hill area with other prospectors. Seeing a grove of oak trees, they all wanted it for a homesite. The question was decided by a footrace, which Smith won, thus becoming the community's first settler. His nearest neighbor was one Dr. Harris, who lived five miles away. A post office was established to serve the community in 1871, but was closed the next year, and mail was sent to nearby Valley Creek. The first church in the Grove Hill community was organized in the home of Joseph P. Ring and was Baptist. The community's Cumberland Presbyterian Church also organized at an early date. Grove Hill's first church building was built in 1869 near what is now the Methodist church. The second story of that early structure was used as a Masonic hall by Grove Hill Lodge No. 373, and the first floor was used by all church denominations and by the school. In 1879 William T. Clark, F. K. Taylor and T. C. Cobb, trustees of the community's Methodist Episcopal Church, bought four acres of land for twenty dollars. The land was to be used for a cemetery, church, and school. The oldest grave in the Grove Hill Cemetery is that of William Thomas, who died in 1862. The Grove Hill United Methodist Church and the Grove Hill Cemetery are all that is left of Grove Hill. A historical marker for the community was erected in 1981.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Leonard Centennial Commission, A History of Leonard, Texas (Leonard, Texas, 1980).

Tom Hymer and Elizabeth Clark Routh