Alderbranch, TX

Alderbranch (Alder Branch) is on Farm Road 323 and the Alder Branch of Squirrel Creek eleven miles southeast of Palestine in southeastern Anderson County. The Alder Branch post office operated from 1863 to 1913. B. F. Chambers established a sawmill on the branch in the early 1880s, and by 1884 the community had water-powered sawmills, two churches, two general stores, cotton gins, a district school, and forty inhabitants. Alder Branch reached an estimated peak population of sixty around 1890, but by 1896 the district school was gone. The population was only thirty, though the community still had Methodist and Baptist churches, two sawmills, two cotton gins, a flour mill and gin, and one general store. In the 1930s the community was called Alderbranch and had an estimated twenty-five inhabitants and one business; a sawmill was located less than a mile east. In 1982 the community consisted of several scattered dwellings, and it was still listed on state highway maps in 1985. By 2000 the population was only five.