Midlothian, Texas

Everything Midlothian is known for

0 songs mention this city 3 artists from here

Music in Midlothian

Songs About Midlothian

No songs reference Midlothian yet.

Artists From Midlothian

A
Amanda Kate Ferris
country
A
Amanda Kate
country
C
Copperhead Jones
country

Rivers & Roads in Song near Midlothian

Songs written about the waterways and highways that run near Midlothian.

Interstate 20 13 songs Interstate 45 8 songs Trinity River 11 songs Chisholm Trail 8 songs Texas State Highway 199 8 songs Interstate 35 43 songs

Musical Heritage

A Gospel Powerhouse Set Up Shop on the Hill RoadyGoat

Cedar Hill's musical heavyweight works in gospel, not country or blues. Fred Hammond, the singer, bassist, songwriter, and producer widely credited with shaping the sound of modern urban contemporary gospel, built his career and his Face to Face Productions company around the Dallas-Fort Worth area, with Cedar Hill firmly on his map. Hammond came up as a member of the influential group Commissioned before launching a long solo run and his own ensemble, and his production fingerprints sit on dozens of gospel records, enough that he's been called the genre's quiet hitmaker behind the boards. He's stayed tied to the community here over the years, including faith and music events in Cedar Hill itself. It fits a town that has long counted its churches among its anchors, going back to the days when rebuilding a Methodist congregation was one of the first things residents did after the 1856 tornado flattened everything else. The hilltop suburb that grew up around farms and broadcast towers also became home base for one of gospel's defining modern voices. (Source: Fred Hammond / Face to Face Productions; AllMusic.)

RoadyGoat → · 7.7 mi away

History of Midlothian

The Homesick Scot Who Named the Town RoadyGoat

1848

Before it was Midlothian, this spot was Hawkins Springs, named for a spring on land the William Alden Hawkins and Larkin Newton families claimed through the Peters Colony in 1848. A post office opened in 1877 under the name Barker, probably for Charles Barker. Then the railroad came. As the Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe line pushed through in 1883, a homesick Scottish train engineer looked at the rolling green countryside and said it reminded him of Midlothian, the county south of Edinburgh in his native Scotland. The name took hold around 1882 or 1883. It fit twice over: this was the midpoint between Dallas and Cleburne. By 1884 the town had two churches, a school, and a newspaper, and it incorporated in April 1888 with about 300 people.

The Engineering of a Cement Kiln RoadyGoat

Those enormous rotating cylinders at the Midlothian cement plants are feats of chemical and mechanical engineering called rotary kilns, and they're the heart of the whole operation. Here's how they work. Limestone, clay and other minerals are crushed and ground into a precisely blended raw meal — a dry powder, in the modern kilns running here now; TXI shut down the last of the old wet-process kilns on this site back in 2010, after about fifty years. The meal is fed into the high end of a massive, slightly angled steel tube. As the kiln turns, the mixture tumbles slowly downward toward a roaring flame fired by coal or natural gas. In the cooler stretch the heat drives carbon dioxide out of the limestone — that step is called calcination. Farther down, in the burning zone at around 2,600 degrees Fahrenheit, the material fuses into something new: gray, marble-sized nodules called clinker. Cool that clinker, grind it with gypsum, and you have Portland cement, the essential ingredient of the concrete that built the modern world.

RoadyGoat →

The Cement Capital of Texas RoadyGoat

1960

Midlothian sits on a ridge of Cretaceous limestone called the Austin Chalk, and that white rock underground turned this town into what locals proudly call the Cement Capital of Texas. Three cement plants mine the local stone here, and they rank among the ten largest cement factories in the whole United States. Texas Industries built the first, opening in 1960 and expanding to three kilns by 1967. Ash Grove followed in 1966, and the plant now run by Holcim opened in the mid nineteen eighties. In 2014 the giant TXI operation was bought by Martin Marietta. Together the plants pour out millions of tons of cement a year, and Texas landmarks like Dallas City Hall and the Meyerson Symphony Center were built with cement made right here, just south of town off U.S. Highway 67.

Chris Kyle Memorial Highway

2013

Honors Navy SEAL Chief Petty Officer Chris Kyle, deadliest sniper in American military history, killed at a Texas gun range February 2, 2013, by a veteran he was trying to help. Raised in Midlothian.

Historical Marker →

The Mulkey-Loggins House

1854

This property was part of a tract settled in 1854 by pioneer Philip A. Mulkey (d. 1862). Ennis was founded in 1871, when the Houston & Texas Central Railroad reached this point. Mulkey's son James (1859-1903), a prosperous cattleman, included this site in the Highland addition, a neighborhood that he developed after Ennis became the railroad's divisional headquarters in 1891. Dr. James C. Loggins (1845-1921), mayor and city alderman, erected this Victorian residence in 1898. It was purchased in 1944 by Keith Mulkey, James Mulkey's grandson, and his wife Tina Beth (Wheeler). (1978)

Historical Marker →

Midlothian Cemetery

1848

What would later become Midlothian began as part of the Peters Colony, which brought settlers to Texas from 1841 to 1848. W.A. and Anna Hawkins and their extended family arrived in 1848, in time to receive acreage for their new home. Their son Benjamin Franklin Hawkins set aside part of his land for a church, and the adjacent land became the community's cemetery. Although earlier unmarked graves most likely exist, the earliest marked grave, that of Mary Elizabeth Hawkins, dates to October 1873. Two of her young children, who died shortly after her death, are buried nearby. In 1874, John W. and George W. Hawkins deeded four acres including the burial ground to the Methodist church; the community has added surrounding land over the years to increase the cemetery to its current size. The city of Midlothian incorporated in 1888. W.A. Brundage, Sr., the city's first mayor, is among the many notable area residents buried here. The cemetery is also the burial place of military veterans, pioneers, farmers, ranchers, paupers and many others, representing the community's long and rich heritage. Historic Texas Cemetery - 2003

Historical Marker →

Midlothian, TX

1848

Midlothian is on U.S. Highway 287 and the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe and Southern Pacific railways nine miles northwest of Waxahachie in northwest Ellis County. Settlers arrived in the area as early as 1800, but colonization did not occur until peace treaties between the Republic of Texas and the Indian inhabitants were finalized by Sam Houston in 1843. The William Alden Hawkins and Larkin Newton families were the first to obtain permanent land titles at the site, under the authority of the Peters colony in 1848. The locale became known as Hawkins' Springs after a spring on Hawkins's property. A log cabin with an earthen floor was the community's first school, church, and community hall. As better materials became available, more permanent buildings were constructed. A post office called Barker, probably after Charles Barker, was established in 1877. The name was changed to Midlothian in 1882 or 1883. Most accounts agree that the name was suggested by a Scottish train engineer after a location in his home country. The community was selected by the Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe Railway to be a part of its proposed line. Tracks reached the area in 1883, and by 1884 Midlothian had two churches, a district school, and a newspaper, the Midlothian News . The population was 300. Midlothian was incorporated in April 1888. By 1892 the population had grown to between 600 and 800. At least twenty-five businesses made up the business district, including two cotton gins, two general stores, a drugstore, a hardware and farm-implement store, a livery stable, a lumberyard, a saddle and harness shop, a millinery shop, a confectionery, a furniture store, three groceries, a hotel, a bakery, a barbershop, a blacksmith and wagon-repair shop, and a weekly newspaper called the Visitor . The Polytechnic Academy (later Institute), a private boarding school, offered a full curriculum with emphasis in the fine arts. It carried the names of Whitten Institute and Midlothian College before being consolidated into the public school system in 1903. A Texas historical marker is on the site in Kimmel Park. By 1896 Midlothian had a population of 1,000 and sixty-two businesses, including the Argus newspaper. The Midlothian Oil Mill and Gin, founded in 1898, was a three-press mill. At its peak it was a fourteen-gin operation. Before 1929 and the Great Depression many businesses flourished. Some enjoyed substantial trade that included foreign markets. In the 1980s Midlothian, which called itself the "Cement Capitol of Texas," had major industries, including producers of Portland cement and steel. Midlothian also serves as a distribution center for foreign imports. The population rose gradually from 1,175 in the early 1950s to 5,087 in the 1980s, when the city had 120 businesses. Beginning in the mid-1970s Midlothian saw an influx of residents from Dallas and Fort Worth, who built homes on unused farmland outside of town. Though Midlothian proper was left essentially unchanged, the school district expanded to 20,000 students. In 1990 the population was 5,141. The population was 7,480 with 486 businesses in 2000.

Tsha Handbook →

Williams, Marc

1927

Marc Williams was a pioneering cowboy radio singer and recording artist. He was born Marcus Dumont Williams in Ellis County in 1903. He was the son of Charles Curren Williams and Zelica Grace Morgan. He reportedly worked as a cowboy as a young man and studied at the University of Texas for a legal career. Williams held a regular radio program as the "Cowboy Crooner" on KRLD from 1927 to 1930. In 1930 he performed on the air in Waco. Throughout the 1920s and 1930s Williams also did live appearances in North Texas as well as some vaudeville touring. Between 1928 and 1936, Williams recorded nine sessions for the Brunswick and Decca labels, waxing a total of thirty-nine sides, of which thirty-six were issued. Most of his titles were classic cowboy songs, including the first recorded version of "Cole Younger," recorded for Brunswick in Dallas in November 1930, and an early version of "Jesse James." A comparison of his lyrics to songs in John Lomax 's Cowboy Songs and Other Frontier Ballads (1910) reveals that he was at least familiar with that work. Among his finest performances is the gently-rapped "Sioux Warriors," perhaps his best-known recording. Williams possessed a smooth singing style that contrasted sharply with the roughhewn sound of early cowboy singers such as Jules Verne Allen . As a result he forms a bridge between those artists and later silver screen cowboys such as Gene Autry . Facts about Williams's life remain vague. In 1937 he published the songbook Marc Williams Collection of Favorite Cowboy Songs . He fronted a cowboy band that included Bill Stockard, Pete Scarborough, and Bob Arwine on KFJZ (Fort Worth) in 1940. Sometime along the way, he adopted the moniker "Happy Hank" for a children's radio show in Dallas which lasted until at least 1947. According to some sources, he may have played that character for a children's program on WHO radio in Des Moines, Iowa, possibly during the 1930s. Williams is also said to have done radio work in Detroit, St. Paul, and Cincinnati. He graduated from Wayne State University in Detroit in 1959 and began a legal career in that city. Williams returned to Fort Worth about 1971 and seems to have given up public performances. He died in Fort Worth on June 18, 1974, and was buried next to his parents in the family plot in Midlothian Cemetery in Midlothian, Ellis County, Texas. His recordings can be heard on Marc Williams: The Forgotten Singing Cowboy , released on Jasmine Records in 2004.

Tsha Handbook →

Mansfield School Desegregation Incident

1956

Though the Mansfield school district, seventeen miles southeast of Fort Worth, numbered fewer than 700 Whites and sixty Blacks in 1956, it segregated Black children to an inferior elementary school. Black teenagers were obliged to ride public buses, which dropped them twenty blocks from a school in Fort Worth. In response to a suit brought by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People on behalf of three Black high school students, the Mansfield school district was the first in the state ordered by a federal court to desegregate. The school board acquiesced, but White citizens resisted, aided by the complicity of the mayor and chief of police. While some 100 other, mostly West Texas, school districts desegregated quietly that fall, angry mobs of 300 to 400 Whites ringed Mansfield High School on August 30 and 31, preventing the enrollment of the three students. During demonstrations Whites hanged three Blacks in effigy, roughed up several outside observers, and threatened the sheriff. Downtown stores closed in a show of support. Vigilantes met all cars entering town, barring suspected sympathizers with integration. Governor Allan Shivers, calling the Mansfield demonstration an orderly protest, defied the federal court order by dispatching Texas Rangers to uphold segregation and authorizing the Mansfield school board to transfer Black students to Fort Worth. President Dwight D. Eisenhower , in the midst of a reelection campaign, did not intervene. The demonstrations ended as the status quo was restored. The Mansfield uprising was the nation's first clear example of failure to enforce a federal court order for the desegregation of a public school. The Eisenhower administration took no action until the next year, when a similar, more visible situation arose in Little Rock, Arkansas, where Governor Orval Faubus's resistance to integration was possibly inspired by Governor Shivers's success in Mansfield. The Mansfield uprising was an apparent factor in the passage of the state's 1957 segregation laws, which delayed integration for several years. In 1965, faced with the loss of federal funds, the Mansfield school district quietly desegregated.

Tsha Handbook → · 9.5 mi away

Things to Do in Midlothian

historical 23.2 mi away
Dealey Plaza

On November 22 1963 President John F Kennedy rode through Dealey Plaza in an open Lincoln convertible and was shot from the sixth floor window of the Texas…
historical 23.2 mi away
The Sixth Floor Museum

Where Lee Harvey Oswald fired from. The JFK assassination site at Dealey Plaza.
quirky 24.6 mi away
Big Tex at the State Fair

A fifty-five-foot cowboy named Big Tex has welcomed visitors to the State Fair of Texas in Fair Park Dallas every fall since 1952. He booms howdy folks over a…
food 24.1 mi away
Pecan Lodge

Dallas' best BBQ. The beef rib alone is worth the drive.

Everything Near Midlothian

664 stories, landmarks & places within ~20 miles — the nearest 200 are listed here — the same local lore RoadyGoat plays as you drive through.

Explore Midlothian on the Map
All music from Texas → · Browse more cities