For more than 100 years, the Parsons community stood here, developing around the homestead and ranch of Amsley Parsons, who came to the area with his family in 1854. Another early settler was Sam B. Kutch, and the Kutch and Parsons families intermarried; on Kutch's property, the Gulf, Colorado & Santa Fe rail line crossed on its way from Weatherford to Cresson and Cleburne after being built through the area in the 1880s. In addition to serving as a rail stop, the community had a rail switching station and offices for telegraph, Western Union, and Wells Fargo services. A post office opened in 1888 under the name Parsons after the originally requested name, Woodstock, was denied by Postal Service officials. The rail stop included cattle pens where area ranchers loaded livestock onto rail cars for shipment to Cleburne and then to other markets. Prominent ranch families in the vicinity included the McFarland, Eddleman, Woodhouse, Buck, Kutch, and Parsons families, and longtime residents also remembered a school named Paradise and a grocery store. The train running from Weatherford to Cleburne was known as Old Nancy Hanks, or Old Nancy, reportedly for a famous horse belonging to Abraham Lincoln's mother; it was a cattle train, though passengers often hopped aboard for rides. In 1931, county construction began on what became State Highway 171, and the road's completion reduced rail use, ended Old Nancy's route, and left few relics of the once vital shipping point and community.