Lancaster, Tx
Founded in 1852 as a frontier post, Lancaster is only 15 minutes from downtown Dallas and strategically placed adjacent to the south sector of the Dallas city limits. Enjoying the amenities of big city life while maintaining a home town environment, Lancaster has a rich historical heritage that points to a proud past.
ImageFounded in 1852 as a frontier post, Lancaster is only 15 minutes from downtown Dallas and strategically placed adjacent to the south sector of the Dallas city limits. Enjoying the amenities of big city life while maintaining a home town environment, Lancaster has a rich historical heritage that points to a proud past.
* It is the purpose of the City of Lancaster to deliver high quality municipal services to the citizens of Lancaster. Through the delivery of high quality municipal services, we aim to provide the conditions necessary to advance the general health, safety, and well-being of our citizens and to improve their quality of life.
* It is our intent to always remain financially sound and provide services in an efficient, cost-effective, and fiscally responsible manner.
* It is our intent to remain responsive to our citizens? needs, to establish cooperative relationships with our citizens, and to provide opportunities for our citizens to participate in the development of the City of Lancaster.
* It is our desire to be a successful and progressive community, a visionary leader of the future.
Lancaster is one of the oldest communities in north central Texas. The area was first settled by members of the Peters Colony. On August 30, 1841, Republic of Texas President Lamar signed a contract with the W.S. Peters Company, authorizing the introduction of 600 families into Texas. The first group to arrive in the Lancaster area was led by Roderick Rawlins and his family. The Rawlins group set out from Greene County, Illinois, in September 1844 and arrived in the Lancaster area on January 2, 1845. They settled on the north bank of Ten Mile Creek, forming a community known as Hardscrabble. This temporary community consisted of two rows of log structures near the north edge of what is today Edgewood Cemetery on Nokomis Road.
Pleasant Run, the second community to be established in the Lancaster area, was founded in 1846, several miles north of Hardscrabble. M.M. Miller, and his wife Polly, who was one of Roderick Rawlins' daughters, built a two-room structure near what is now the intersection of Pleasant Run Road and Dallas Avenue. The Millers lived in one half of the building and established a general store in the other half. In 1848, the Millers' store became a post office as well, with biweekly delivery, and Miller was appointed postmaster. By the 1850s, Miller had laid out a town and sold lots; however, he never filed a plat of the town with Dallas County. At its peak, Pleasant Run boasted a stage stop, a hotel, a tin shop, a blacksmith, a woodworking shop, a steam-powered grist mill, and a school, in addition to the Millers' store.
The founder of Lancaster was "Honest A" Bledsoe. Bledsoe was born in Lancaster, Garrard County, Kentucky in 1801. An interesting note about his name: according to family lore, when his father, Moses Bledsoe, first looked at his newborn son, he is said to have remarked, "He looks like a Bledsoe." Thus, his name, A Bledsoe, is unmarked by a period. As a young man, Bledsoe had settled in Missouri. In 1846, he ventured to the new state of Texas. Liking what he saw, he secured a 640-acre tract of land one mile west of what was later to become the town site of Lancaster and returned to Missouri to collect his wife and six children. Once his family was settled in Texas, Bledsoe began various speculative enterprises by which he hoped to make his fortune.
Bledsoe surveyed and staked off the original town of Lancaster in 1852. He purchased the land for the site of his new town from the widow of Roderick Rawlins, Mildred Parks Rawlins. Bledsoe laid out the town square and adjacent streets in the exact pattern of his birthplace, Lancaster, Kentucky. In this pattern, the streets enter the town square from the center of each side rather than from the corners. A Bledsoe's grandfather, Joseph Bledsoe, had used this same design when he laid out the town in Kentucky, borrowing the pattern from Independence Square in Philadelphia.
Bledsoe began to sell lots in his new town at public auction in 1853, although the plat of the town was not recorded in Dallas County until 1857. Reportedly, Bledsoe gave away as many as two-thirds of the lots to attract settlers from nearby Pleasant Run. Lancaster's growth accelerated following the death of M.M. Miller in 1860, and Lancaster soon surpassed its neighbor as the dominate community in the area. Incorporated in May 1866, Lancaster was one of the first incorporated communities in Dallas County.