Eldridge Hopkins, for whose family Hopkins County was named in 1846, donated this site for the county seat. Named for Gen. Edward H. Tarrant (1796-1858), a Texas Ranger and Mexican War veteran, Tarrant gained a post office in March 1847. A two-story frame courthouse was begun in 1851, but lack of funds delayed its completion for two years. Tarrant quickly grew into a thriving frontier town with a tannery, steam mill, blacksmith shop, brick kiln, and hotel, and after 1851 it also had a Masonic Lodge and school. During the 1850s, the newspaper Texas Star began publication and a Methodist college opened. Encircled by creeks, the town was difficult to reach in bad weather. That inconvenience led Capt. Thomas M. Tolman in 1868 to transfer county records to Sulphur Springs, where Federal troops under his command were stationed after the Civil War to enforce Reconstruction laws. Despite local protests, county government remained there until civilian rule was restored in 1870. The return to Tarrant was brief, because the state legislature in 1870 named Sulphur Springs the permanent county seat. Soon Tarrant began to decline, and a rural community and old cemetery now mark the site of Hopkins County's first county seat.