Corn Hill, settled primarily by people from Texas and the southern states, was one of the earliest communities in Williamson County. John E. King, county judge from 1858 to 1860, named it for the home he built on a hill and a nearby cornfield in 1852. This dispersed agricultural community became the first stop on the stage line from Georgetown to Fort Gates in Coryell County. A post office opened in 1855, and by the 1860s an influx of new residents had settled there. In 1878, George G. Grant established Corn Hill Academy Male and Female School on land donated by Judge King, and it prospered before moving in 1886 to a new two-story building with four classrooms, a bell tower, and an auditorium that also served local church services. By 1893, a public school opened as part of the Corn Hill Independent School District. By the end of the nineteenth century, Corn Hill had a saddle club, several churches, two cotton gins, Corn Hill College, fraternal lodges, and school organizations. In the early 1900s, residents became active in Populist politics and the Farmers’ Union, and industrial activity included the Corn Hill and Gravis Telephone Company and a waterworks, though a planned interurban to Bartlett was never built. The settlement began to decline in 1909 when the Bartlett Western Railway passed two miles north and established the town of Jarrell; steam engines moved homes and businesses to the new townsite, others relocated to New Corn Hill, and many residents remained. Today, the dispersed settlement endures as a reminder of the area’s early agrarian heritage.