New Hope, Wood County, Texas

There is a New Hope cemetery just south of the railroad line and about a mile south of the current position of the New Hope Baptist Church, suggesting that the town relocated north to this site from an earlier location. The region was first established in 1842 when Nathan Warren, a native of Georgia, built a residence on his land grant near the future location of the town of New Hope. Twenty years later, planters from Louisiana are claimed to have moved into the area and given it the name "New Hope" in the hopes of making a comeback. There didn't appear to be any established communities at that time. By 1917, a Baptist congregation that had been established in 1864 in the neighboring Greer's Neighborhood (later known as Golden Rule) had moved, changed its name, and established itself as the New Hope Baptist Church at the community's second, more northern location. New Hope had a church, five shops, and several houses in the 1940s. At the location in 1960, there was only a church and a few dispersed homes left, but by 1988, the community had added several new homes. Although New Hope was on the Mineola mail route, it appears that it never had its own post office. Early in the 1980s, the Texas Historical Commission unveiled a marker for the New Hope Baptist Church. The population was 15 in 2000.[2]

New Hope is located on Farm to Market Road 1801, 4 mi (6.4 km) east of Mineola and a mile north of the Missouri Pacific Railroad in southern Wood County.[2]

New Hope was served by the Bluejack Academy in the 1880s with a summer school. The community's school district was founded in 1884. In 1896, the school had 32 White students and one teacher. It had 47 students a decade later. In 1932, there were 126 White students in ten grade levels with four teachers and 33 black students in seven grade levels with only one teacher. The school continued to operate in 1988.[2] Today, the community is served by the Mineola Independent School District.