Ripley Townsite Company, Titus County, Texas
By Sam Ferguson, Production Manager, East Texas Journal
Ripley Townsite Company had filed its charter in Austin, Texas July 26, 1913, with a capital stock of $6,000, with the incorporators being J. V. Moore, E. S. Lillienstern, Charles O. Lide and H. A. Wilson, said the July 27, 1913 San Antonio Light.
This townsite of Ripley was located about eight and a half miles Northwest of Mt. Pleasant on CR 1450 on the old right of way of the Paris and Mt. Pleasant Railroad (the Ma & Pa) about where the Tri SUD’s pump station and storage tower is now.
Ripley had a railroad depot and a store which was operated by Richard W. Blankenship, that was also the Post Office. He was Postmaster of from 1914 to 1926. It had a blacksmith shop, a gin, and a two-story community building. The top floor was used as a lodge meeting place for the Woodmen of the World and the Brotherhood of American Yeomen. The bottom floor was used as a public meeting place, and services were held on alternate Sundays for the Baptist and Methodist Churches. Later the Baptist bought a lot on the west side of Ripley and the Methodists moved to Green Hill. There were never many lots sold, and the town began to close down in the early 1920’s, said Lynch Harper in his Lynch Harper Files.
The townsite of Ripley actually began in 1912, and included 98 1/2 acres of land with a section of 19 Blocks from the Southwest corner of the William Eakin Head-right Survey that had been platted, (shown on first photo at top), out for the Ripley Townsite owned by J. V. Moore. Mr. Moore sold some lots in the townsite before it was organized into the Ripley Townsite Company. The first acreage he sold was 8.45 acres to the Paris and Mt. Pleasant Railroad on December 30, 1912, according to the Lynch Harper Files.
The Paris and Mt. Pleasant Railroad was completed in June of 1913. In 1912 the people of Mt. Pleasant gave a bonus of several thousand dollars to the Paris and Mt. Pleasant Railroad to build a railroad line from Paris to Mt. Pleasant, a distance of 50 miles, said R. L. Jurney’s History of Titus County.
H. A. Wilson and E. S. Lilienstern were members of the railroad’s first board of directors. The company was chartered on January 29, 1909. That company was sold to the Texas Power and Light Company in 1952, and the Paris and Mount Pleasant Railroad was abandoned in 1956, said the Texas State Historical Association.
Mr. Moore also sold Block 17 of the Ripley Townsite to Farmers and Merchants Cotton Oil Company on January 18, 1913, said the Lynch Harper Files.
On March 3, 1913, J. V. Moore sold 3/4 interest in a 39.5 acres of his 50 acre tract to E. S. Lillienstern, Charles O. Lide and H. A. Wilson, except for four lots that Moore had already sold.
“Post Office Safe At Ripley Blown Up By Burglars”, headlined the September 24, 1925 MP Daily Times. “Sometime Wednesday night someone entered the store of R. W. Blankenship at Ripley, in which is located the post office, and blew up the safe in which $24 in cash was kept. No stamps or money order blanks were tampered with. Whoever did the work knew what he was doing as no one heard the explosion which blew off the door of the safe. It was thought nitroglycerine was used, as some bars of soap which had been shaved down were found near the safe”.
Ripley Creek, that flows across the Northwestern part of the county, was named after Ambrose Ripley‘s family that moved to Titus County, north of Winfield on or near the Cherokee Trace in early 1830’s. On April 10, 1841 Ambrose Ripley’s wife Rachel and seven of his children were massacred at their home on Ripley Creek by Choctaw Indians, but two of his girls escaped and Mr. Ripley was not at home at that time, said Traylor Russell in History of Titus County.
