GRANT'S COLONY, TEXAS. Grant's Colony was two miles east of Huntsville in central Walker County. It was named for its benefactor, George Washington Grantqv, of Walker County, who planned a model farming community at the site. He accumulated over 8,000 acres in the district between 1856 and 1874. The community has sometimes been called Harmony Settlement. Grant provided land for a school and two churches, a Methodist Episcopal and a Baptist. Grant's Colony was predominantly a freedmen's village. Two public schools in the area enrolled twenty-four black students in 1898. Cotton and corn were the principal crops raised by the local farmers, who were largely tenants or sharecroppers, and Grant provided a mill and gin nearby. In the 1930s the property was purchased by the National Forest Service.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Walker County Genealogical Society and Walker County Historical Commission, Walker County (Dallas, 1986).
