Cross Roads
Originally published in "The Navarro County Scroll", 1960
Reprinted with permission of the Navarro County Historical Society
By Mr. Bob Henderson

About four miles southwest and two miles south of the present locations of Blooming Grove and Frost was an early settlement called Cross Roads.   In 1875 a combination school and Masonic Lodge was built there.  The lodge met upstairs and school was held downstairs.  As settlers continued to come Cross Roads became a thriving little community.  It had a post office, gin, blacksmith shop, four stores, a Baptist and a Methodist Church, and about ten homes.  The community had many fine citizens, some whose families still live in this area.  Wiley B. Jones built the gin at Cross Roads.  He was remembered as later keeping a trained bear, and building the steamboat on Frost Lake.  R. J. Sanders came to Cross Roads from the McCore community in 1882 where he owned 1100 acres of land.  He bought 475 acres of land at Cross Roads and went into the mercantile business.  Mr. Sanders originally came to this area from Kaufman County in 1864 after serving in the Civil War.  He had enlisted at age sixteen.  He married Eliza McPeters and they had ten children.   One of them was Ive Sanders, who recently passed away.  He was the source of much of this information.  Mr. Sanders bought a general store from George Acrey.   this store also contained a post office.  The postmaster was a bachelor from Illinois named Mathis or Matthews.  He also was Mr. Sanders' book keeper.   Another early settler was Rev. J. G. Way, grandfather of Earl Way of Frost.   Cross Roads was to receive a doctor in 1885 when Dr. Rice Knox, fresh out of medical school in Kirksville, Missouri, arrived in Corsicana. After conferring with the local doctors they felt that he should go to Cross Roads, as the town needed a doctor.   R. J. Sanders furnished a small plot of land and a two room building.  He had an office in one room and he slept in the other.  J. A. Tullos owned a large amount of land also, paying seven to ten dollars an acre for it.  he and Joe Galbraith ran a general store there, moving to Frost later.  This little community was short-lived though, because when the Cotton Belt Railroad built its line from Hillsboro to Corsicana in 1887, the community moved two miles north to the railroad and founded Frost.   Today all that is left of this once thriving community is a cemetery, overgrown with weeds.