From White Settlement Tribune October 13, 1966 "White Settlement Days" Special Edition Author Unknown
HISTORY OF WHITE SETTLEMENT DATES BACK TO 1800s
Shrouded in the past,
the city of White Settlement only gradually emerges from the dust of the
old Chisholm
Trail, for it was a landmark used by cattle drivers even before the
establishment of Fort Worth. There apparently
were settlers as early as 1830, but the first documented pioneers were
building their first log cabins shortly before
the beginnings of Fort Worth. In 1849, Charles Turner and two brothers,
Elijah (Lige) Ward Farmer and Joseph B.
Farmer were building on what is the area known now as Carswell AFB.
Through Elijah Farmer's land flowed a
creek named, obviously, Farmer's Branch. His home was on the present
location of White Settlement Road.
Joseph Farmer per-empted 320 acres of land which extended north to
the present Knight's Lake on Carswell
property.
On at least one occasion, Lige Farmer and his neighbors were called
up to give chase after Indians, for the
marauding Comanches were quite a danger to the settlers. When they
were first there, church services were held in
the various homes, because of the danger of Indian raids. Then, when
the danger was somewhat lessened, they took
no chances in their church buildings either, for there were two men
and dogs outside the church and one man, also
armed with a muzzle-loader and with a dog inside the church to guard
the pioneers. The dogs were often able to
smell out lurking Indians long before they would be seen by the men.
The scares of Indians were very real, and the false alarms were none
the less frightening, for the records show
that more than one man, riding alone was terrified by a regular series
of owl hoots to find that the Indians making
the hoots were as frightened as he was when they realized their signals
were being messed up by a real owl and
they slipped off into the darkness. Another man thought he was being
pursued by Indians and discovered to his
pleased chagrin that it was a small herd of calves, attracted by hoof
beats.
The first little girl born in Fort Worth was Sue Farmer whose family
was traveling from Tennessee. They
stayed at the fort until she was born and then stayed at White Settlement
to have their wagon fixed by R. H. Cane.
Mr. Cane tried without success to get the family to stay but they insisted
on leaving. They were later reported as all
being massacred by Indians in Millsap, Texas about 1850.
As Fort Worth grew larger, there were many encampments around its outskirts.
Some were of friendly Indians
and some of Negroes, and these seemed to be designated as to color.
Gradually, the area became known as the
white settlement. About 1857 or 1858, Mrs. Mitchell Girl's school presented
a May festival and program. The girls
were all dressed in white and wore garlands of native white flowers
picked from nearby prairies. Captain Joe
Terrell was much impressed with the affair and wrote of the occasion
for the Dallas News. Referring to the white
costumes, he mentioned that the place surely should be called "White
Settlement" ... so the story goes.
During the years of, 1854 through 1856, large caravans of settlers arrived
in the area. Two of them included
Paul Isbell and George Grant from Kentucky. Isbell built a plantation
on the site of Carswell AFB, and did a large
amount of farming, as well as being a slave trader. He gave land for
the first White Settlement school and Isbell
Road is named in his honor.
The first wedding in the town was in 1851 when Elijah Farmers daughter
Millie married James Ventioner,
Jr., son of James Sr., on of the earliest settlers. They took over
farmland which extended west from what is now
North Side High School to beyond Ohio Garden Rd. and north to Roberts
Cut-Off. James Jr. was known to never
be affected by the periodic droughts, and when the question of who
had corn to use for cornbread, the storekeepers
could always rely on the supply held by James Ventioner.
The early home of Charles Turner was razed and he built a fine home
near one of the large oak trees that still
stands at the entrance to Greenwood Cemetery, which was carved out
of his original holdings.
The stage coach lines ran from Fort Worth to Weatherford and passed
through White Settlement. The stage
coach stop was at one of the homes that still flanks the golf course
on the east end of Carswell AFB.
The area continued to grow slowly through the Civil War and into World
War I. With the onset of World War
II, the city suddenly began to boom, as the bomber plant and Carswell
AFB were constructed. The number of
homes increased in 1943 from 200 to 1200.
The city was incorporated in 1941 and adopted home rule in 1954. Being
completely surrounded by Fort
Worth and other communities, it has increased the interest of the citizens
in their town and how to best see it
prosper.