MILLWOOD, TEXAS. Millwood is on the East Fork of the Trinity River ten miles east of Wylie in southeastern Collin County. The town originated during the gold rush days of 1849-50, when people infected with gold fever passed through Texas on their way to California. Because of the few established roads and trading posts in the Lone Star State, the forty-niners purchased goods wherever they could. Drury Anglin, who owned the land Millwood eventually was established on, started a general store on his farm because of the increasing number of persons who stopped at his place in search of food and supplies. Within a few years a community was organized and named Millwood because of a lumber mill near Anglin's land. On May 21, 1851, a post office was established.

By 1885 Millwood had a population of 100, a church and school, and businesses including a flour mill, a gristmill, and a cotton gin. The community, however, never surpassed the population figure reached in 1885. Bypassed by the St. Louis and Southwestern Railway, Millwood was unable to compete with the transportation and business facilities at nearby Wylie. On December 14, 1907, the mail to Millwood was discontinued and sent to Royce City in Rockwall County, four miles southeast of the town. Over the next three decades the population of Millwood steadily declined. In 1940 the community had ten persons and one business. In 1986 these figures remained the same.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Roy Franklin Hall and Helen Gibbard Hall, Collin County: Pioneering in North Texas (Quanah, Texas: Nortex, 1975). J. Lee and Lillian J. Stambaugh, A History of Collin County (Austin: Texas State Historical Association, 1958).

David Minor