Webb – Arlington, Texas
Bowman Spring Era
The community actually dates from before the Civil War. Dan Zuefeldt from Canada owned the first mercantile store and is known as the founder. Brothers Tom and Martin Rhodes opened another store. Bowman Springs was an area in far southeast Tarrant County.
It was originally settled by Isaac G Bowman and his family. Bartlett Wesley Fry was born in 1843 in San Augustine County, in the Republic of Texas, and was an early pioneer of the Community of Webb. He is buried in Estes Cemetery. The Fry family still lives in Webb. Francis Marion Loyd was born in 1835 and moved from Illinois and Arkansas. Marion Loyd and his younger brother James purchased 78 acres and built a home in 1857 in what is now known as Loyd park. The 1895 Sam Street Map shows a number of “flowing wells” in that vicinity. There is also a Bowman Branch, a tributary of Walnut Creek.
The Fort Worth to Johnson Station Road had its origins in the mid 1800s with the establishment of Middleton Tate Johnson’s plantation and Ranger station there about 1847 near Marrow Bone aka Mary Le Bone Springs and the founding of Camp Worth in 1849. It was a part of a primary road from Dallas to Fort Worth and from the late 1850s was also a stage line and star mail route. Present Arkansas Lane in Arlington approximates the route of Fort Worth to Johnson Station Road. In the 1880s a store was opened in the vicinity of Bowman Springs and in 1895 a post office named Webb was established there. Thereafter the community was known as Webb.
Webb
Formerly known as Bowman Spring, is just off Farm Road 157 eight miles from Fort Worth in southeast Tarrant County. In the early 1880s, Daniel Zuefeldt opened a general store. Between 1895 and 1901 Webb had a post office, and in 1897 it had Methodist and Baptist churches. In 1935, this community had 92 voters, a school with 3 teachers and 105 students, a cotton gin, and 2 stores. June Brown wrote the Webb News in the Mansfield paper. This was a real Texas co-op farming community where neighbors and friends depended on one another. In 1976 the community had a church, a school, a factory, and at least one more business. In 1987 it had an estimated forty-three residents and three to four businesses. In 1991 it was still listed on county highway maps.
The store, a cotton gin, and the town of Webb are shown on the 1895 Sam Streetmap. The Webb Baptist Church was organized there in 1906 but has since relocated to Arlington and the original church building is now a Masonic Hall.
The first school in Webb was the Loyd School, named after one of the early families in Webb. It was located in South Webb, about one mile south of Webb proper. South Webb faded away in the early 1900s when the Baptist Church and Webb School were located in Webb proper.
The one-room school was a typical structure for the period. The next school building was a three-room wooden school built near the cotton gin in Webb. After that, a two-story brick school was built, it was condemned in 1927. The last school was built and classes continued until 1965 when the Mansfield ISD approved a consolidation of the district.