ELLISON SPRINGS, TEXAS. Ellison Springs was off Farm Road 8 four miles northwest of Gorman in southeastern Eastland County. It was named for the perpetual springs that flowed from a nearby stone ledge, themselves named for the first settler on the site, James Madison Ellison, who built a cabin by the springs in 1858. In August 1864 Ellison and other ranchers fought a skirmish with Indian raiders near the site. Brush-arbor camp meetings were held by the springs in the 1870s, and about 1876 a Baptist church was built and a cemetery was begun in the community. The community had a number of scattered dwellings in 1940, but only the Ellison Springs Cemetery remained on the site by 1968.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Edwin T. Cox, History of Eastland County, Texas (San Antonio: Naylor, 1950). Eastland County Historical Book Committee, Gateway to the West: Eastland County History, Vol. 1 (Eastland, Texas, 1989).

Mark Odintz