In what follows there shall be found “nothing extenuate, nor aught set down in malice.” It will be “an o’er true tale” as I saw it I do not hope that this little volume will be complete but that it may serve as a foundation for some future historian to erect a structure as voluminous and veracious as Gibbon’s Rome or Hume and Smollett’s England. As far as it goes it may be regarded more authentic and reliable than Knickerbocker’s History of New York. FIRST SETTLEMENT OF FORT WORTH. At the close of the war with Mexico, General Winfield Scott sent a troop of the Second Dragoons in command of Major Ripley A. Arnold to North Texas to establish a post to protect the then sparsely settled territory from the forays of the Indians which then inhabited this section. Major Arnold selected this as the most central point for this purpose. The post was first called Camp Worth in honor of Brigadier General William Jennings Worth. It was established on the sixth day of June, 1849. On November 14th, 1849, the name was changed to Fort Worth, and it was abandoned on the 17th day of September, 1853, and the troops stationed here were sent to Fort Belknap, about a mile from the present site of the town of Belknap. There was never a fort at this point and the only buildings were the barracks at the head of and a little west of Houston street. The first settlement in the county of any magnitude grew up about the military post and on its abandonment the buildings were used as stores by those who had settled near the post. Among those who were in business here were Col. Abe Harris, who at this writing still lives in the city, the late James F. Ellis and G. P. Farmer who subsequently located a farm about twelve miles south of the city. When the soldiers left there was only a meagre country population in the vicinity; barring a few supply trains no current of trade had yet begun to flow through this section of Texas. There were no cattle trails; nothing permanent to arouse enthusiasm for this straggling settlement on the Trinity Bluff and the seed of civilization planted and protected during the brief military occupancy, might, on good and relative grounds, have experienced the same blight that befell Fort Phantom Hill and Fort Belknap. But this nucleus of citizens, among whom, besides those named, were E. M. Daggett, C. M. Peak and John Peter Smith, whose names later became associated with every enterprise in which the city was interested.