HOPEWELL, TEXAS (Franklin County). Hopewell is on Farm Road 21 six miles southeast of Mount Vernon in southeastern Franklin County. Settlement began in the area in the 1850s, and by the 1880s the community that had developed was known as Hopewell. By 1896 it had two schools, one with sixty white students and two teachers and the other with twenty-two black students and one teacher. The school for black children was one of only five such schools in the county. During the 1930s Hopewell had two churches, a school, a cemetery, and scattered houses. The only population estimates available for the community begin in the 1970s, when the number of residents was routinely estimated as thirty-five. In 1985 the community had a town hall, a cemetery, and widely scattered houses. Through 2000 the population of Hopewell was still reported as thirty-five.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Billy Hicks and Doris Meek, comps., Historical Records of Franklin County, Texas (Mount Vernon, Texas: Franklin County Historical Survey Committee, 1972).

Cecil Harper, Jr.