Lancaster, Texas

Lancaster (/ˈlæŋkɪstər/ LANK-is-tər) is a city in Dallas County, Texas, United States. Its population was 41,275 according to the 2020 census. Founded in 1852 as a frontier post, Lancaster is one of Dallas County's earliest settlements. Today, it is a suburban community located in the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex, about 15 mi (24 km) south of downtown Dallas.

Lancaster is part of the Best Southwest area, which includes Lancaster, Cedar Hill, DeSoto, and Duncanville.

In 1841, an act of the Republic of Texas Congress authorized President Mirabeau Lamar to enter into a contract with William S. Peters and 19 associates to promote settlement in North Texas, and paid the company with free land in exchange for recruiting new settlers. Around 600 families settled in what became known as Peters Colony from 1841 through 1844. The Peters' group advertised heavily in Kentucky, Illinois, Missouri, and Tennessee, so many of the earliest settlers were from those states. The first group to settle in the Lancaster area was Roderick Rawlins and his family from Greene County, Illinois. They left for Texas in September 1844. Rawlins and two of his sons-in-law came ahead to select the general area where they would settle. They chose an uninhabited area south of Dallas along the north bank of Ten Mile Creek as the site of their new settlement. In December 1844, the three men went back to Lamar County near the Red River to bring the rest of their wagon train. All of the settlers had arrived by January 2, 1845, and they formed a community known as Hardscrabble. It consisted of two rows of log cabins with a street running north and south. In total, 30 men, women, and children lived in Hardscrabble.

Several miles north of Hardscrabble, a second community called Pleasant Run was established in 1846 by Polly Rawlins, one of Roderick's daughters, and her husband Madison Moultrie "M.M." Miller. Together, the Millers built a two-room structure, with one room used as a general store and the other for living. By 1848, the structure had grown to 15 rooms, a separate store, and a warehouse. A post office was established with biweekly mail delivery and Miller as postmaster. By 1850, he had laid out a town and sold lots, but never filed a plat of the community with Dallas County. At its peak, Pleasant Run boasted a stage stop, school, and steam-powered grist mill in addition to Miller's store. Accelerated by the death of M.M. Miller in 1860, Pleasant Run declined. Shortly after the Rawlins' settlers abandoned the Hardscrabble settlement, Lancaster became the dominant community in the area.

The founder of Lancaster was "A" Bledsoe (Some sources list his name as Abram Bledsoe. or Albert A. Bledsoe). He was born in Lancaster, Kentucky, in 1801. According to family lore, when his father Moses 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.

Bledsoe surveyed and staked off the original town of Lancaster in 1852. He purchased 430 acres of land from the widow of Roderick Rawlins, and modeled it after his Kentucky hometown. The layout featured a town square with streets entering from the center of each side rather than from the corners. Bledsoe began selling lots at a public auction in 1853, reportedly giving as many as two-thirds of them to settlers from the nearby Pleasant Run community. The official plat of the town of Lancaster was not filed with Dallas County until 1857. Bledsoe later served as Dallas County judge and state comptroller. He died in 1882.

In 1860, a post office was established in Lancaster.

During the American Civil War, the Tucker, Sherrod, and Company contracted with the State of Texas to manufacture replicas of the .44 caliber Colt Dragoon from a factory on West Main Street in Lancaster. John M. Crockett, former mayor of Dallas and lieutenant governor of Texas, served as superintendent of the arms factory. In the early years of Reconstruction, a drought crippled the economy to such an extent that few residents could afford more than the most basic of necessities. The economy did not fully recover until well into the 1870s, due in large part to the town's proximity to heavily trafficked cattle trails. The first public well was dug in the city's town square in 1876. Fires destroyed parts of the square in 1877, 1889, and again in 1918, each time being promptly rebuilt. Local telephone service came to Lancaster in 1881. Lancaster was incorporated on May 5, 1886. One year later, the Lancaster Herald newspaper began printing.