Elysian Fields

Elysian Fields is at the junction of Farm roads 31 and 451, a mile north of the Panola county line in Harrison County. Popular tradition holds that the name of the town originated in a dinner conversation in New Orleans in 1817, in which Capt. Edward Smith, having lately ridden through what was then?Big Spring?Caddo?Village (also erroneously known as Biff Springs), so vividly described the beauty of the area that one of his guests likened it to the Elysian Fields of Greek mythology. By the 1830s the Indians had moved west beyond advancing white settlement. Smith returned to?the region?with his family in 1837 and established one of the first general stores in the area. A mail route was established by the Texas Congress in February 1840 by which time the new community was called Elysian Fields; a post office subsequently opened. The Golden Rule Presbyterian Church was organized on January 15, 1851, and was followed by the Bethel Methodist Church five miles from town, for more than fifty years the site of an annual camp meeting.