W.L.  Holder was one of the first to settle in Grayson County; the family came from Alabama in ox wagons.  He arrived around 1845 and settled 4 miles west of Denison.  Mr. and Mrs. Holder's cabin was built in the early 1840s near the intersection of Crawford Street and Harvey Lane in Denison.  The cabin actually is the Cold Springs School.  The school house was moved to Frontier Village in 1972.

Mr. and Mrs. Holder were among the first six families to settle in Grayson county.  They lived in tents for two years, waiting for their land grants to be approved by the Republic of Texas.  W.L. Holder owned 900 acres; he later fenced off 80 acres with split rails in order to raise corn and cotton.

The men went to Shreveport, Louisiana once each year to buy sugar, coffee, salt and flour, lead & powder to mold their bullets.  They killed wild game to eat - deer, turkey, prairie chickens and quails.  The family's clothing was made from cotton and deer skins.  They raised food to eat, such as corn.
The little community built a school for their children, known as the Cold Springs School, is believed to be the first school in the county.   He and his sons built the first school from logs in the area, around 1855.  Clifton Lafayette Holder, the third of eleven children born to W.L. Holder and Maryon Looney, was raised in the Preston Bend area.  At one time his family even lived in the old log schoolhouse, Cold Springs.   The first teacher, Maudie Mangrum, slept in the loft and ate with families of her students.  A fireplace was the only way the building could be heated.  The building had and still has split-log benches for the children to sit on.  There are holes in some of the logs and the story handed down by the Holder descendants is that pegs were inserted into the holes with planks laid across them to serve as desks or shelves.

The Holder Family Home, built ca1880

Back row, left to right: Clinton Lafayette Holder (father), born 1845; Commanche Delaware Holder (mother), born 1857,
Eulah Morrison Holder, Beulah Holder Nichols, Charles Frederick Holder, Rufus Irving Holder

Front row, left to right: Lawson Lafayette Holder, Gladys Holder Kibler, Nancy L. Holder Evans, Jerry Bledsoe Holder
Photograph taken ca1896

COLD SPRINGS SCHOOLHOUSE

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Biography Index

Susan Hawkins
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