LIBERTY, TX (HOPKINS COUNTY)

LIBERTY, TEXAS (Hopkins County). Liberty, also known as South Liberty, a rural community in southwestern Hopkins County nine miles southwest of Sulphur Springs on Farm Road 1567, was first settled around the time of the Civil War. L. A. Matthews obtained a patent for land at the site in 1859 and sold the property to W. S. White in 1861. A church was organized in 1887; W. E. Middleton was pastor. Middleton and a missionary named Wimms organized revival meetings. The community for a time was known as South Liberty to distinguish it from North Liberty in the northern portion of the county, but its name was eventually shortened to Liberty. A public school was operating there by 1905, when it had an enrollment of 102. In the mid-1930s Liberty had a church, a cemetery, a school, and a few scattered farmhouses. The school later closed, but in the mid-1980s the community still had a church, a cemetery, and a few houses.