Bear Creek Community

Settlers began arriving in this area, once part of Robertson’s Colony, in the 1850s, and early families included the Casters, Borahs, Sowers, and Haleys. Following the Civil War, freedmen moved to the area, and friends and families once separated by slavery were reconnected. Jim Green, the first African American landowner in what became known as the Bear Creek community, bought his acreage in 1878, and others soon followed, including Jim Chivers, Ben and Rose Dilworth, Alex King, Elizabeth Lawson, Collins and Rachel Patton, D.W. Ellison (Ellerson), Sam Sweat, the Trigg family, and Minnie Shelton (Sheldon), who later donated land for Shelton’s Bear Creek Cemetery. These families organized the Shady Grove Christian Methodist Episcopal Church in 1884 and erected a one-room church and school building on land donated by Jim Green. The congregation built a larger structure in 1897 and continued to grow and worship together throughout the 20th century. The Bear Creek community school, known as Freedom School, began as a private education facility, and students later transferred to Grand Prairie’s Dal Worth School, which became County Colored School No. 2. That school, along with schools from the Sowers community, was annexed to the Irving Independent School District in 1955. Early teachers in the Bear Creek settlement included Josie Davis and Earlie Mae Wheeler. Approximately 150 years after the first settlers arrived, the once rural settlement was experiencing rapid growth from the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex and related highway and airport expansion, while Shelton’s Bear Creek Cemetery remained one of the few links to the settlement and the lives of the families who contributed to the community over the years.

Irving, Texas · United States