Kentucky native John Miles Cope, who settled in Collin County in 1848 with his parents and brother, helped organize the Copeville community, originally known as Black Spot, in the 1850s on land in the Willis Roberts and Hezekiah Walters surveys. In 1878, he became the town’s first postmaster. Thomas King platted the original townsite in 1877, but in 1886 the community moved one mile northeast to a site beside the Gulf, Colorado, and Santa Fe railroad tracks. Local merchant James E. Jones, who gave the railroad land for its right of way and depot, operated the town’s first general store at the new site. By 1885, the community had a church, bank, cotton gin, sawmill, flour mill, saloon, and a general store that housed a doctor’s office. Copeville became the shipping point for the area’s farm products and bois d’arc timber, valued for its dense, tough wood. The Karo School, at the original townsite, began in 1895, and the Copeville school operated from 1913 into the 1940s. Although the community never incorporated, by the early 20th century Copeville had grown to about 300 residents. In 1921, Elizabeth Pearce became one of the country’s first female postmasters. In the early twentieth century, the first Methodist Church of Copeville and the first Baptist Church of Copeville, organized as Mount Pleasant Baptist Church in 1857, relocated to the town. In that era, businesses included the Craft Hotel, a drugstore, a pickle factory, and several general stores. Just after World War II, the town had about 150 residents, two churches, and five businesses.