Peters Colony & the Hedgcoxe War

The Colony takes its very name from the land scheme that opened this corner of north Texas to settlement — the Peters Colony. Under an 1841 Republic of Texas contract, W. S. Peters and his partners agreed to bring hundreds of families to the region, furnishing each with seed, shot, and a cabin in exchange for half their land grant. By 1848 some 1,800 colonists had arrived, but resentment over the company's cut boiled over in 1852, when the unpopular agent Henry Hedgcoxe was driven from his land office and armed men ransacked the records — the so-called Hedgcoxe War. This driving loop traces that founding conflict of southeast Denton County: the site of the uprising, the colony grant itself, the area's oldest Baptist congregation at Hebron, and a pioneer cemetery in the oldest settlement of all.