NEW BETHEL, TEXAS. New Bethel was a church community west of the intersection of U.S. Highway 69 and Farm Road 2813 and three miles south of Tyler on the St. Louis and Southwestern line in central Smith County. The 1936 county highway map did not label the community, but at that time there was a cluster of homes and a school in the vicinity. That year the New Bethel School had two teachers offering grades one through nine to sixty-four black students. By 1952 the school had been consolidated into the Flint Independent School District. In 1973 New Bethel had a church and a few scattered dwellings on light-duty and dirt roads. It was not labeled on the 1985 county highway map.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Edward Clayton Curry, An Administrative Survey of the Schools of Smith County, Texas (M.Ed. thesis, University of Texas, 1938).
