GALILEE, TEXAS (Smith County). Galilee is six miles west of Tyler in western Smith County. Lake Placid is two miles to its east. The area, originally part of the huge Thomas Quevado land grant, was once known as Seven Leagues because of the grant's massive size. Settlement in the vicinity was slow because the land's owners, James, Benedict, and Mary McFaddin, kept it off the market until 1870. By 1903 the area was still sparsely inhabited. The 1936 county highway map, however, showed Galilee with two churches, a cemetery, and a school, which in the mid-1930s had three teachers and 117 black elementary school students. By 1952 the Galilee school and other local rural schools had been absorbed by the Noonday Independent School District, which later became part of the Bullard Independent School District. In 1966 Galilee consisted of a church, a cemetery, and a few scattered farms. In 1973 the settlement was identified as a church community. It was still shown on the 1981 county highway map. In 2000 the population was 150.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Vicki Betts, Smith County, Texas, in the Civil War (Tyler, Texas: Smith County Historical Society, 1978). Edward Clayton Curry, An Administrative Survey of the Schools of Smith County, Texas (M.Ed. thesis, University of Texas, 1938). "School Sights," Chronicles of Smith County, Fall 1969. Smith County Historical Society, Historical Atlas of Smith County (Tyler, Texas: Tyler Print Shop, 1965).

Vista K. McCroskey