RED BRANCH, TEXAS (Leon County). Red Branch is a community on Farm Road 831 six miles southwest of Oakwood in northeastern Leon County. As early as 1860 a school was established in the vicinity, in a log building on the Heatly tract. In 1896, after William Eldridge donated an acre of land, a frame school building was built. In 1907–08 a local school had one teacher and served thirty-four white students, and a second school served seven black students. After 1902 the school building was also used as a meeting place for the Mount Pisgah Baptist Church. The 1941 county highway map indicates widely scattered residences and a school in the vicinity. A 1969 map shows the Mount Pisgah Church on the Red Branch stream just south of Farm Road 831, and a cemetery two miles southwest of Farm Road 542 on Ringgold Creek. In 1944 the local school district was consolidated with that of Oakwood, and the old school building was later moved to a different site to serve as part of the church. The Red Branch community may at one time have also been known as Mount Pisgah, after the church and school. The community church and a cemetery were originally in or near the community of Ringgold, which had a post office from 1856 to 1867. The Mount Pisgah Church was moved to Red Branch from Ringgold after the congregation split with the Ringgold group, which became the New Hope Baptist Church. Red Branch apparently used the old Mount Pisgah Cemetery. The last population estimate for Red Branch was fifty, recorded in 1947. A Texas Historical Commission marker for Mount Pisgah Church and Cemetery has been placed on Farm Road 542, three miles south of Oakwood. Red Branch was still listed as a community in 1990.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: A Journal of Leon County History, Autumn 1981. Leon County Cemetery Records (2 vols., Centerville, Texas: Leon County Genealogical Society, 1982). Leon County Historical Book Survey Committee, History of Leon County (Dallas: Curtis Media, 1986). Zoraster Robert Robinson, Proposed Plan for the Reorganization of the Schools of Leon County, Texas (M.A. thesis, University of Texas, 1941).
