Double Springs

Settlers began to establish permanent homes in the vicinity as early as the 1840’s.  A widow, Parmelia Allen and several of her married sons and daughters and their families.  The site which appealed to them was about three and one half miles northeast of present day Keller, were two large flowing springs that could supply abundant water.  Hence the small community was called Double Springs.

Shelter was an urgent need.  The timbered area furnished plenty of logs.  Willing hands built the first cabin for the family with the greatest need.  Other families continued to cook on campfires and live in their covered wagons, until their turn came for a cabin with a sandstone fireplace.

After all were provided with such luxuries, the next need was a place of worship and a school house.  On July 13, 1850, a meeting was held in the home of Daniel Barcroft, where the Mt. Gilead Church was organized with eight charter members; John A. Freeman, Daniel Barcroft, Iraneus Neace and his wife, Lucinda, Parmelia Allen, Abby Dunham and two slaves, Ambrose and Caroline.

A log church was built in 1851.  It served as a school house on week days, during a term which could not begin until the cotton crop was picked and had to end before the next planting season.

In 1859, a band of Indians burned the log church.  Worship services had to be held elsewhere.  Eventually the church was rebuilt.  It has been remodeled and modernized to its present state.

The Mt. Gilead Cemetery lies north and across the road from the church of the same name.  Many of the grave stones bear names of ancestors of fourth and fifth generation descendants who live in Keller.

The first settlers found unfenced virgin land with a lush growth of wild plums, grapes, blackberries and persimmons and an abundant supply of wild game such as deer, antelope, buffalo, bear, rabbits, squirrels, turkey and other fowl.  Streams were well stocked with fish.  Nibblers, grazers and browsers did some damage to crops, but rewarded the farmer with plenty of meat for his table.  Bears were the chief trouble makers because of their dislike of hogs.  Bears found hogs a nuisance and because they killed the hogs, farmers had a problem with bears.

Fences were non-existent and hard to come by because barbed wire had to be freighted by horse or ox drawn wagons from as far away as East Texas.  Rail fences solved the problem in timbered areas.  Bois d’Arc hedges were used more on the prairie.  Remnants of them can be seen now as trees in fence rows west and south of Keller.

Each farmer planned his plantings to meet his own needs and to provide seeds for next year’s crop.  There was little reason to raise a surplus, since there was no near market, where it could be sold.

Land grants varied in size.  A single man could homestead one hundred and sixty acres, a man with a family, three hundred and twenty acres and veterans who had served in the Texas War for Independence (1836) could claim as much as six hundred and forty acres.  After free land was no longer available, late comers could buy it for prices ranging from twenty-five cents to one dollar per acre.