This is the first of a series on Texas Ghost Towns. Geojeepsters
was kind enough to let me adopt this very historic site.
ELIZABETHTOWN, TEXAS. Elizabethtown was on the north side of
Elizabeth Creek, from which the town derived its name, in the
southwest corner of the Shamblen survey, fifteen miles southwest of
Denton in Denton County. The first settlers there, members of the
Peters colony,qv arrived around 1850. The settlement served as a
supply station in 1852 for cowboys driving their herds north to
Kansas. The town's founders, the Harmonsons, built a church, homes,
a business, and a school, which at one time had twenty-five
students. In 1859 the town had six saloons, a hotel, and a post
office. George Harper, the doctor, was postmaster; M. H. Smith,
Newton Chance, and Amos Bullard were blacksmiths; Sewell Brown was
a merchant, James Snyder a wagonmaker, and Robert Wright a
carpenter. The Civil War left the frontier west of Denton County
undefended against Indians, however, and many families moved east,
though they later returned. As Elizabethtown grew, it acquired four
general stores, a hotel and livery stable, Baptist and Methodist
churches, and a Masonic lodge that functioned from 1873 to 1876.
According to residents of nearby Justin, Elizabethtown was once
nicknamed Bugtown, after bugs swarmed to the lights at a camp
meeting one night in such numbers that it was necessary to stop the
preaching. The 1880 tax roll is the last roll of Denton County in
which Elizabethtown is mentioned. The Texas and Pacific Railway,
built from Fort Worth through Denton County in 1881, bypassed
Elizabethtown by two miles. When this happened, many residents
moved two miles east to the new town of Roanoke with their
businesses, churches, and lodge. The Elizabeth Cemetery, which is
still in use, is all that remains of what was the first town in
southwest Denton County.