Freestone County, Texas
History



Dallas Morning News- August 19, 1895 - Page: 9

Wortham
A Thriving Town on the Houston and Texas Central Railroad in Freestone
   Wortham, Freestone Co., Tex., Aug. 14 – The thriving town of Wortham is 
   situated on the Houston and Texas Central Railroad in the northwestern 
   corner of Freestone county, near the boundary line of Limestone and Navarro 
   counties, eight miles north of Mexia in Limestone county and twenty-two 
   miles south of Corsicana in Navarro county, and 189 miles from Houston and
   seventy-five miles from Dallas.
   
  The town of Wortham does perhaps as much business and has as much push and
  enterprise as any town of its size in the state.  It is surrounded by
  productive prairie lands easy of cultivation and yielding bountiful returns 
  to the husbandman.  It is known and spoken of as the beautiful little city 
  on the prairie.  The locality is high, well drained and healthy.  Timber 
  abounds in profusion four miles east of town, extending to the Trinity river,
  the eastern boundary of the county.  Water is obtained at form forty to 
  forty-five feet, good freestone water with occasionally a flow of limestone 
  water.  The population of Wortham is 753 souls.  
  
   The Houston and Texas Central railroad did the following business at this 
   place during the last twelve months:  Freight received:  4,854,912 pounds,
   earnings $1294.53; freight shipped, 11,573,683 pounds, earnings $3168.84. 
   Ticket sales, $428.85.  There was shipped from here during this time 185 
   cars of cattle.  In will be remembered that small-pox quarantine regulations
   affected very seriously and damagingly the business interests of the town of
   Wortham during nearly three months of the present year, beginning on the 18th
   day of February, yet the report of nearly every business man in town shows 
   that his sales and cash collections have been larger and more satisfactory 
   than the year preceding, notwithstanding the extremely low price of cotton in 
   connection with the quarantine regulations.  There are thirty-one business 
   houses.  There is one weekly paper here, the Freestone Vindicator, A. Eubanks
   editor.  There are four churches, in which seven denominations of Christians
   worship, one Masonic hall, one Knights of Honor, one temperance and one
   alliance organization, four Sunday schools, one Christian Endeavor and one 
   Epworth League organization, one cornet band, a large and commodious hall for
   public exhibitions, two cotton yards, three gins with mills attached and one 
   large school building with a large and flourishing school.
   
   There is an opening here for a bank.  The business of the  town would amply 
   justify and support such an institution.  Much inconvenience unavoidably
   results in transacting the financial business of the town through banks at 
   Corsicana and Mexia.  Much of the cotton raised tributary to this place goes 
   to other places on account of the absence of banking facilities.  Enterprising 
   business men contemplate putting in a brick block in addition to the present 
   number of business buildings already occupied.