Dove Community

Dove Community. . The 1843 Bird's Fort Treaty between the Republic of Texas and several Native American tribes opened this area for new immigrants. In the ensuing years, about 35 related families arrived from Platte County, Missouri, and settlers for other parts of the United States migrated to this area to claim land offered by the Peters Colony. They settled along Denton Creek, south near present-day Grapevine, and west near what is now Roanoke. In February of 1846, area residents organized the Lonesome Dove Baptist Church. In 1847, members built a long log structure approximately four miles northwest of Grapevine in the eastern Cross Timbers. The Lonesome Dove School also began about that time, and the Rev. John Allen Freeman served as schoolteacher as well as church pastor for ten years., In 1849, the state legislature created Tarrant County, with Birdville as a county seat, and the U.S. Army established Fort Worth as a frontier fort. The small village of Dove developed by the 1870s. A general store and post office operated at the intersection of Dove and Lonesome Dove roads, and the community became a farming center for cotton, melon and dairy production. Included as part of the community were Lonesome Dove Cemetery just north of the church site, the Dove Branch swimming hole, used for recreation as well as baptisms, and Dove School, which closed in 1919 when Carroll School was built in the newly-named Carroll Common School District., The Federal Government completed Lake Grapevine in 1952, requiring a number of families to relocate from the northern portion of the Dove community. In 1979, the city of Southlake annexed Dove, but evidence of the early area community remains.