VEAL'S STATION, TEXAS. Veal's Station is on a spur off Farm Road 51 twelve miles north of Weatherford in northeastern Parker County. The first white settlers arrived in the early 1850s. Among them was William G. Veal,^qv who opened a general store a quarter mile from the site of the present town. Originally the location of the store was referred to as Creamland or Cream Hill. In 1857 Veal and fellow settlers John Lantz and G. W. Coleman constructed a large building that served as a Masonic meeting hall and a common school. A huge bronze bell above the building was used to warn settlers of imminent Indian attacks. Soon after the building was finished Veal moved his general store near the school, and gradually the place came to be known as Veal's Station. Postal service began in 1857. Despite its location on a stage line from Weatherford, the community developed slowly due to the continuing Indian threat. In 1868 postal service was discontinued. By the late 1870s the Indians had been driven out, and the town began to grow. Postal service was resumed in 1878. By the mid-1880s Veal's Station was a farming center. An estimated 100 residents were served by a school, three churches, and a general store. Area farmers processed their cotton at two gins. In the 1890s the common school, called Parsons College after its director, Sam W. Parsons, had an enrollment estimated at 500. The high enrollment was attributed to an energetic agent who promoted the school throughout West Texas and accepted anything of value as payment for tuition and board. When Parsons resigned in 1899, he received as his last year's salary 100 cow ponies, sixty of which he traded for a store at Veal's Station. After it was bypassed by the railroads the town ceased to grow, and gradually the number of businesses, students, and residents declined. In 1906 postal service was once again discontinued. In 1936 the state erected a historical marker at the site of the school building.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Joe Harper, The History of Education in Parker County, Texas (M.A. thesis, Southwest Texas State Teachers College, 1951). Gustavus Adolphus Holland, History of Parker County and the Double Log Cabin (Weatherford, Texas: Herald, 1931; rpt. 1937). Henry Smythe, Historical Sketch of Parker County and Weatherford (St. Louis: Lavat, 1877; rpt., Waco: Morrison, 1973). Weatherford Democrat, August 11, 1939.

David Minor