He couldn't have chosen a better place. Springtime turns the North Texas countryside of Kaufman County into lush greens. This is perfect farming country. The East Fork of the Trinity River flows strongly through its lowlands and the land swells from the dark river and rolls onto gentle prairies. The spring sky is well lighted. Even today one stands on this country ground on a new April day and feels a limitless, peaceful world stretching upward, reaching out on all sides.
Enoch P. Chisholm surely must have experienced that sense of well being this country exudes.
He was born in Tennessee on new years day in 1813, one of the younger sons of a frontier hero of the War of 1812 known as John (Redbuck) Chisholm.
Enoch's grandfather was Captain John Chisholm, a revolutionary war veteran of the Battle of Kings Mountain and a leader in the Watauga settlement of East Tennessee. The Chisholms, no relation to the Chisholm trail founder, were hardy Scots-Irish protestants and fiercely independent, just as their forefathers along the borders of Scotland and England a long time ago.
As a newly licensed circuit preacher in the fledgling Methodist Church of early Texas he had first seen this country in the mid-1840's, perhaps a little earlier. In 1845, at age 32, he was the preacher assigned to the DeKalb circuit which was headquartered in Bowie County of Northeast Texas. Enoch had been in Texas since 1835, had served in the army of the Republic of Texas as a First Lieutenant in Captain Collins Sabine Volunteers. In 1836 he married the daughter of Samuel Doak McMahon who had founded a church in his home, which is still in operation today and is the oldest protestant church in Texas. She was Amanda Alabama Tennessee McMahon. Enoch and his bride were charter members. Amanda was born in 1820 and so she was just 15 when she married Enoch, a not-uncommon age for brides on the frontier in the early 1800's.
In 1847, Enoch was assigned as pastor of the Methodist Church in Kingsboro in Kaufman County. The name of the town was later changed to Kaufman when it became county seat. The census of 1850 shows, indeed, that Enoch and his family were living in Kaufman County. With him are his wife, Alabama, daughters Lucinda and Missouri, son John, and one of Enoch's brothers, Joseph McHenry Chisholm (1819-1863) who, in 1848, became the first tax-assessor collector for Kaufman County and was an officer in the Confederate regiment that was raised in the area. Joe Chisholm died in Arkansas, probably as a result of wounds or illness suffered while on duty with the CSA. He married Sarah Laroe in Kaufman on November 9, 1852. Enoch's youngest child, Enoch P. Chisholm, Jr., was born in 1851 and became a Methodist minister.
Enoch was an active member of the Masonic Lodge, in keeping with the tradition started by his father, Redbuck. The original petition of the Bloomfield Lodge, of Kaufman County (so named because its early meetings were in a field of wild flowers), was dated April 14, 1852. Enoch P. Chisholm and his brother, Joseph McHenry Chisholm, were among the original petitioners. There is an indication that Enoch enlisted in one of the regiments raised in Kaufman County in 1861 but his enlistment did not last long – perhaps because of age. Enoch retired from preaching in 1857 and pursued stock farming full-time, becoming one of the most successful stockmen in the County.
No census records show Enoch ever owned any slaves during his lifetime and it is likely that he may have had a personal abhorrence of slavery.
Enoch's first wife, Amanda, passed away in about 1853 and the following year he remarried. His new wife was a widow, Mary Anderson. They had one child, Sarah Elizabeth. Mary Anderson became known as Aunt Mary and was a beloved figure in the area. Although Enoch and his family enjoyed many successes, their lives were not without tragedy. In the 1870's Enoch's home burned and Mary broke both ankles in leaping from a window to escape the flames. Two children, probably grandchildren, perished in the fire.
Enoch and his brother, Rufus King Chisholm, who came to Texas following the Civil War, were leaders in the movement to create Rockwall County in the 1870's.
Another brother of Enoch, Benjamin Franklin Chisholm, was also active in county and community affairs. Land for the cemetery and church had once been part of land owned by Enoch's daughter, Lucinda, and her husband, Jasper Newton Deguire. Lucinda and Jasper lived most of their adult lives in the Lawrence community of Kaufman Co. John Alex Chisholm. Enoch's oldest son, was a civil war veteran and served as superintendent of the Chisholm Chapel Sunday school for many years and later moved to Montague County. Enoch's second daughter, Missouri, was known as "Zoo" and married Sid McDougal and lived in the area.
Chisholm Chappell was constructed at the cemetery site and Enoch's grave was just behind the church near the rear entrance. Today the Chisholm cemetery has many resting there—family and neighbors from the farms and homes of this sweet and peaceful country. It is unlikely that Enoch or his young wife Alabama, or for that matter their fathers in an earlier, more heroic age, ever sat and contemplated exactly what they had done—which was, namely, to conquer the toughest half of the American continent—not only conquered but settled and "civilized" it, too.
The town of Chisholm was established in about 1886 when "Uncle Harrison" Howell and his wife, "Aunt Angie" platted 14 acres of their land as a town site. Aunt Angie was the former Angelina Chisholm, Enoch's sister.
Enoch passed away January 27, 1875 of pneumonia and congestion. His grave was the first in what is now Chisholm Cemetery in Rockwall County.
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