Bethel Assembly of God, a small wooden church on the grounds of the Freestone County Historical Museum in Fairfield, was built in the 1930s in the Young community, when Freestone County was known as the "Bootleg Capital of Texas." Robert Q. Hankins started the congregation in 1933, in the depths of the Depression, meeting first in members' homes and then under a brush arbor between the Hickory Grove schoolhouse and Jameson Cemetery. In 1934 cold weather moved the services into the old schoolhouse while members built a 50-by-30-foot wooden sanctuary with a tin roof, a wood-burning heater and white gas lanterns. A former county deputy sheriff, Jack Glass, said that Hankins "did more to clean out the bootlegging in that county than they ever could by the methods of the law."
The trade Hankins set himself against was large. During Prohibition bootlegging in the county centered on Young, also called Young's Mill, and illegal whiskey known as Freestone County Bourbon Deluxe was carried out of the county by car, boat, truck and plane. According to one source, a number of local families became wealthy from the liquor trade, directly or indirectly. The church held services until 1987, when the Young community had dwindled. In 1992 Texas Utilities Mining Company, which was about to mine the land for lignite, donated the building to the museum. It was restored in 1997, moved to the back of the museum property in 2004 to make room for the new Bass Wing, and repaired again in 2020, when an old whiskey still stood at its entry. The museum itself opened in 1967 in the county's 1881 jail.
Getting there
31.7264, -96.1580
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