PEATOWN, TEXAS. Peatown, also known as Edwardsville, was on Farm Road 2011 two miles west of the Gregg County Airport in southeastern Gregg County. It was established in the mid-1840s and was originally known as Edwardsville, after Haden Harrison Edwards, who settled in the area. A pay school was reportedly in operation by 1847, and a church was established in 1855 on land donated by Edwards. In the late 1800s the community name was changed to Peatown, reportedly because of an unusually large local crop of peas. The community declined after World War II, and by the early 1990s only a church, a cemetery, and a few scattered dwellings remained at the site.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Marker Files, Texas Historical Commission, Austin. Eugene W. McWhorter, Traditions of the Land: The History of Gregg County (Longview, Texas: Gregg County Historical Foundation, 1989).
