After the 1843 Bird's Fort Treaty between the Republic of Texas and several Native American tribes opened this area to new immigrants, about 35 related families came from Platte County, Missouri, and other settlers arrived from elsewhere in the United States to claim Peters Colony land. They settled along Denton Creek, south near present-day Grapevine, and west near what is now Roanoke. In February 1846, local residents organized the Lonesome Dove Baptist Church, and in 1847 its members built a long log structure about four miles northwest of Grapevine in the eastern Cross Timbers. The Lonesome Dove School began around the same time, and the Rev. John Allen Freeman served for ten years as both schoolteacher and church pastor. In 1849, the state legislature created Tarrant County with Birdville as a county seat, and the U.S. Army established Fort Worth as a frontier fort. By the 1870s, the small village of Dove had developed into a farming center for cotton, melon, and dairy production, with a general store and post office at the intersection of Dove and Lonesome Dove roads. The community also included Lonesome Dove Cemetery north of the church site, the Dove Branch swimming hole used for recreation and baptisms, and Dove School, which closed in 1919 when Carroll School was built in the newly named Carroll Common School District. Completion of Lake Grapevine in 1952 forced a number of families to relocate from northern Dove, and in 1979 the city of Southlake annexed the community, though evidence of its early history remains.