Dialville, Texas

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History

Dialville, first called Dial, was named for J. J. Dial, a pioneer settler who donated the town site. Comer, Fariss & Dial opened the first store about 1882. Some four years later the failure of their chain of five stores scattered through the county left Dialville merely a flag-station until it took a fresh start, about 1902, with the opening of the John Bailey store. Among other early merchants were Miller & Meazles, Odom & Odom, P. B. Harris, and W. F. Jones. Other pioneer settlers in the Dialville section induded the Dements, Lindseys, Moores, McKnights, Ackers, Thomason, Durrets, Cribbs, Halberts, Johnstons, Burnetts, Sides, Glasses, Grishams, and Dovers.

Two newspapers had brief careers. The Dialville News, established by W. M. Ellis of Rusk in 1913, with Will T. Read as publisher, was soon sold to Clyde Ratcliff, formerly connected with Ratcliff and Alto papers. A little later Ed Scott became editor. In 1920, Charles Benge was gaining wide comment by his editorials in the Dialville Searchlight. In its heyday the town had a bank, a band and a picture show.

Following Craft's lead in tomato culture Dialville has been for many years an important shipping center. Earlier it was one of the leaders in the peach industry.

Today Dialville has seven stores, three churches, including the old Rocky Springs Church, and a consolidated ten-teacher school. Doctor J. W. Moore has been a practicing physician for thirty-five years. - A History of Cherokee County, 1934 by Hattie Joplin Roach

Rocky Springs Missionary Baptist Church. Organized April 8, 1848, by a group of settlers from this area, in the home of Thomas J. Lindsey, under Elder Walter Ross. The known charter members included Minerva Crenshaw, Frances Halbert, John Halbert, Sally Margaret Halbert, Stephen Halbert, John Harris (an ordained deacon), Lucy Johnston, Thomas Johnston, Bathsheba Lindsey, Elizabeth Lindsey, J. J. Lindsey, Thomas J. Lindsey, Isaac Sheppard, Seary Sheppard, and Wylie Thomason. True pioneers, these people had immigrated to the area just three years earlier, when Texas was admitted to the Union. The Rev. George Washington Slover, said to have built the Atlanta Hotel depicted in the Civil War novel "Gone with the Wind", was the first pastor. Soon after the organizational meeting, a log cabin was erected on the present site to serve as a place of worship. The bubbling springs here and at the Lindsey home probably inspired the church name. The cemetery originated in the early days of the church; the oldest legible headstone is dated 1849. The original log church building was replaced in a few years by the present structure and in 1950, Sunday School rooms were added to it. - Historical Marker Text. Marker erected 1969. Located .5 mile west of Dialville on FM 1910