First school in Collin
County
Five early settlers with
their families established the Wilmeth Settlement These five were Tola
Dunn, T. J. McDonald, John R. Jones, J. B. Wilmeth and Abe Hall. All
these, save Hall, received their land from the Republic of Texas. Hall
bought his. Tola Dunn was the first settler. He built a log cabin across
the branch southeast of the present McLarry cemetery in 1843. McDonald
located where the Ben Pitts home is now, in 1844. Jones' home was 400
yards northwest of the McLarry graveyard. J. W. Wilmeth located two
miles north of present McKinney, where John B. McKinney now lives, and
Hall bought several hundred acres lying just east of the McDonald
homestead. Jones also located there in 1844 with McDonald, and J. B.
Wilmeth settled on his land in 1846. Hall moved there in 1852. The
families of these five men, together with, later, their sons-in-law,
daughters-in-law, were about the only people living in what is now
Wilmeth when the Civil War started, 1861. There, were, in all, about 85
of them.
Wilmeth took its name from
J. B. Wilmeth who, from the time he settled there, was interested in
education. It took its name, not from him particularly, but from the
schools he started. Two years after he settled he started a small free
school in a log cabin just north of where the powerhouse now stands.
This was in 1848. He and his sons and daughters ran this school until
1855, when he moved it to the unfinished upstairs of his newly built
home a mile north. Here the Wilmeths carried on the school until 1861,
when the Civil War caused them to suspend it. J. B. Wilmeth and his
eight sons went into the war, as did all the other able-bodied men of
the settlement.
After the war, Wilmeth
re-opened the school with his son, James and daughter, Betty, as
teachers. This school was operated for the children of the settlement
until 1874, when James built a home a mile north, where the Caves lived
later, and took over and taught school in his home, which was a large,
two-story house with an upstairs built for a schoolroom. At different
times E. W. Kirkpatrick and Anson Mills of McKinney aided Wilmeth in
teaching. By now there were over a hundred people in the area and they
joined Wilmeth in building a frame schoolhouse a half mile northwest of
J. B.s home. School started there in 1877 with James Wilmeth and his
sister Betty as teachers. This was a free school, the first in collin
County. This building was about 30 feet in length and 25 wide, and was
used as the Wilmeth School until the new schoolhouse was built a
half-mile west in 1892. At various times, up to 1886, when teachers
could not be secured, school was again held in the homes of J. B. and
James Wilmeth.
In 1886 the county was
organized into school districts, with Wilmeth being numbered 35, a
number it carried until its end. The county school system started at
Wilmeth in 1887 with Mrs. Kate Mack. James Wilmeth had taught there for
the past few years. Follows is a list of the teachers of the Wilmeth
School, as well as can be procured at this time.
The Wilmeth Family, 1848 to 1887
Mrs. Kate Mack 1887 to 1889
Charley Williams 1889 to 1890
Mollie Works 1890 to 1891
J. C. Waters 1891 to 1892
Jami Helms 1892 to 1893 In new building
J. H. Faulkner 1893 to 1894
E. R. Hall 1894 to 1896
E. R. Brown 1896 to 1898
T. D. Simpson 1898 to 1901 Teacherage built
Levi Dorn 1901 to 1903
G. W. Scoggins 1903 to 1905
A. L. Dyer 1905 to 1907
E. S. Kirby 1907 to 1911
J. W. Moseley 1911 to 1913
James Davis & wife 1913 to 1915
Margaret Shook, R. E.
Beaseley & Mae Hall 1915 to 1918 Also Pearl Skelton
Axie Grove &
Mae Thompson 1918 to 1919
Wilmeth consolidated with McKinney, summer of 1920. It
was operated for two or three years more, but as part of the McKinney
School System.
Roy F. Hall
