History

NEW HARMONY, TEXAS (Smith County). New Harmony, also called Harmony, is a farming and church community on Clear Branch and Farm Road 724 two miles south of Mount Sylvan in western Smith County. The area was settled by April 1867, when New Harmony Baptist Church, the oldest continuously active congregation in the county, was organized in the local school building. J. J. Harris served as the first minister and had a fellowship of eighteen. Eventually separate facilities were acquired for the school and the church. By 1903 there were two schools in New Harmony, one with two teachers for seventy-three white pupils, and the other with one teacher for fifty-three black pupils. In 1925 local citizens organized the Mount Olive Baptist Church. The settlement had two churches in 1936, as well as a cemetery, a business, and a cluster of farms. The only school at that time, a white elementary, had two teachers and fifty-four pupils. In 1945 the town had fifty citizens and two businesses, and in 1949 the members of the New Harmony Baptist Church finished a new building. By 1952 the school had been consolidated into the Dixie Independent School District. In 1965 New Harmony consisted of two businesses, two churches, two cemeteries (New Harmony and Breese), and a collection of dwellings on Farm Road 724. The community had forty farms in 1973, and it was shown on the 1981 county highway map. In 2000 the community had 350 inhabitants.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Edward Clayton Curry, An Administrative Survey of the Schools of Smith County, Texas (M.Ed. thesis, University of Texas, 1938). Smith County Historical Society, Historical Atlas of Smith County (Tyler, Texas: Tyler Print Shop, 1965). Donald W. Whisenhunt, comp., Chronological History of Smith County (Tyler, Texas: Smith County Historical Society, 1983).