OAK GROVE, TEXAS (Wood County). Oak Grove is at the intersection of Farm roads 14 and 2088, seven miles east of Quitman in north central Wood County. The community was settled by the 1850s and may have been served by the nearby Ebenezer Baptist Church as early as the 1860s. In 1872 this church had sixty-five members and ran a Sunday school. In the same year the Oak Grove community built a schoolhouse with desks and glass windows. Financed by private donations, the building was said to have been one of the first schoolhouses in the county to be built for exclusive use as a school. By 1896 Oak Grove had two schools, in which a total of 122 students were taught by three teachers. By the 1930s the community had a population of fifteen, a number of scattered dwellings, a school, a church, and three businesses, including a factory. From the early 1940s to the late 1960s the population of Oak Grove was reported as around fifty. Though by 1960 Oak Grove had only a few scattered dwellings and a nearby church, in 1968 its population was reported at seventy-four. The same figure was reported for the community in 1988 through 2000.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Adele W. Vickery, A Transcript of Centennial Edition, 1850-1950, Wood County Democrat (Mineola, Texas, 1974).

Rachel Jenkins