HOOD,
TEXAS
The inland village
of Hood, fourteen miles southwest of Gainesville in Cooke
County, is located on the highest hill
in western Cooke County and received its name from A. P.
Hood, one of the pioneer settlers in the community, and in whose house the
first post office was located.
Mr. and Mrs. Hood both natives of Texas, were married in Parker
County and came to Cooke County
in early 1880’s settling in the Era community. After a brief stay, they moved
to the farm home adjacent to the future town site of Hood. . The Hood post
office opened in 1889, and the community received its first major businesses in
the early 1890s after Ira Cook divided his farm into town lots for resale. H.
W. Williams built the first store; William Daniels ran the first blacksmith
shop; and the Williams brothers, Matt, Bird, Steve, and Oscar, built and
operated the first cotton gin. Hood reported a population of 161 in 1904.
It was located on the star route from Gainesville to Rosston 25 miles across the prairie. H. C. Gentry built the
post office boxes, 12 in number and Mrs. Elizabeth Hood was the postmistress
for some 10 years.
Some early settlers included T. L. Gaston,
Jim Hood, Henry Davis, John Harris, Frank Felty, Joe
Davis, Jimmy Cook, Lige and Ben Kirkpatricks,
the Beemans and the Griggses.
The
community began to decline after it was bypassed by the Missouri,
Kansas and Texas line and U.S. Highway 82. In 1907 the
Hood post office closed. During the mid-1930s Hood's population was estimated
at 240; it remained at that level until the early 1940s, when it dropped to
100. It stayed at roughly 100 until the early 1970s, when it dropped again, to
seventy-five. In 1988 scattered farmhouses and the Hood Community Center
were all that remained at Hood. The community still had a population of
seventy-five in 1990. By 2000 the population dropped to twenty.
A Baptist church building was erected about
1891, and a Methodist church was erected in 1900, being dedicated by the Rev.
George Sexton, presiding elder, in September, about the time of the Galveston flood. I. H.
Hoskins was a local Methodist preacher in the community.
Hood’s first physician, Dr. Hewitt came to
Hood to practice medicine about 1897, and after his death , Dr. I. N. Roberson
practiced in the Hood area and operated a drug store there.
About 1901, the school was moved to the town
site, and the Odd Fellows Lodge met in the school building.
Among those who operated stores in Hood in
years past are W. D. Cook, G. T. Purcell and Sons, Mr. Holcomb, Lester Brewer,
and Hoyt Gilland and O.L. Perryman.
Information from, The First 100
Years in Cooke County
and the Gainesville
Daily Register