Pelham

Navarro County, Texas

Founded as "Forks of the Creek" by formerly enslaved people after the Civil War; among the early settlers were Wade Westbrook's family, arrived from Alabama, the Sneed family, and Henry Caruthers, once enslaved on the nearby Lawrence plantation. The post office renamed it Pelham in 1900. The town held about 350 people in the 1920s; a few dozen remain, and it is one of a shrinking number of Texas freedom colonies still active rather than emptied out. A group of residents calling themselves the Guardians of Memory opened the Pelham Community History Museum in 2002 and hold a homecoming every October.

Among the places · On the map

Source: Dallas Morning News, "On a quest to preserve history in Pelham, Texas," 18 November 2012; Texas Freedom Colonies Project (Dr. Andrea Roberts) directory and research writing on Pelham..