Bethel Community

Bethel is on U.S. Highway 287 eight miles southeast of the Trinity River in northwest Anderson County. Most of the land at the site was granted to Jos? de Jes?s Grande on October 28, 1828. In his grant application he agreed to populate and cultivate the land, but little colonization was done until the earliest Anglo-American settlement about 1833, part of a Baptist migration to the area. By the early 1850s the community had a general store and a blacksmith shop. A Bethel post office operated from 1852 until 1914; Charles Gilmore was the first postmaster. The 1860 census of Anderson County showed 300 inhabitants at Bethel.