Plantersville

Plantersville, at the junction of State Highway 105, Farm Road 1774, and the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway in southeast Grimes County, was settled by Americans, primarily from Alabama and Arkansas, during the 1830s, although no actual community seems to have existed until about 1840. In 1843 Alabaman Isaac Baker began constructing an impressive 2,850-acre plantation known as the Cedars three miles northeast of the settlement, which was then emerging near the junction of the headright grants of Austin colonists Asa Yeamans, John Landrum, and William Montgomery. By the early 1850s a two-story Masonic building had been constructed in the community; a school was established on its lower floor. A Methodist congregation of some 200 members, including many slaves, was organized in 1853 by Rev. Robert Alexander , and in 1861 a Baptist group, with twenty members, was formed; George W. Baines , great grandfather of President Lyndon Baines Johnson , served as its first pastor. The two congregations shared use of the Masonic building as a meetinghouse until each could construct its own church. This was accomplished in the case of the Baptists in 1871, and the Methodists in 1873. The first general store, Isaac Baker and Sons, opened in a two-story frame structure sometime between 1854 and 1860. In 1856 a post office was established, and the town was officially designated Plantersville, a name suggested by Mrs. J. L. Greene, to honor the planters who had settled the site.