The citizens of Holland enjoy the convenience of an in-town US Post Office serving this small Bell County community of 1200 peoole.
It was not always so.
From the Holland Progress of 23 September 1940, an anecdote about how mail delivery used to happen here in the 1880s: (
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"Hardships of pioneer settlers of this region forms interesting chapter in history of early days of Holland
None seem able to agree upon the exact date the 2 communities which were destined to become our proud, prosperous and progressive town of today, attained population and community interest sufficient to be dignified with a name. The date is of no great importance except for whatever sentimental value may be attached to it by those who have a penchant for tracing down such things for family records in early associations. What is important is the fact that the community grew into the fine little town we have today.
As is the case with every little settlement, the 2 little communities of Mountain Home and Holland came into being without premeditated action or definitive planning of any kind. The first settlers were roving over the prairie, looking for a likely spot to settle, and as water was of prime consideration, and Darr's Creek furnished this necessity in sufficient volume to meet their needs, they set up their cabins. That is how most of our early towns got started and there is no reason to believe otherwise of our own.
The first settlers in communities like these have little thought for the future prospects, and little dream they would someday develop into important towns. As a consequence no written records of any kind were kept, and in later years when the communities did develop into population centers a consideration was given to the beginning of the community the sole source of information was the doubtful and rarely accurate memory of some of its first citizens. More often than otherwise most of the old-timers either left the community or died, and the stories the survivors told received the embellishments the romantic touch that time has a habit of lending to events.
In the case of our own well-loved hometown, the stories of its founding nurses conflicting as they are numerous. This writer makes no effort to present as absolute fact the data that he is compiled relative to the early history of Holland, but as far as he is been able to learn, there were settlers along the Darr's Creek some years prior to the Civil War. It was but natural that the fertility of this land and its luxuriant growth of prairie grass and other natural advantages for cattle raising should be attractive to settlers who began to swarm over Texas in the fifties, and with the trying days of the reconstruction. Following the Civil War, many of the residents of the other southern states returned from the war to find their homes and waste and desolation prevalent everywhere. It was natural for them to look to the virgin lands of the great Southwest for a new start.
That is the reason why most of our old families trace their family connections back to one or the other of the older southern states.
Mountain home was perhaps the older of the settlements from which our town had its inception there were no definite date fixed, even in the minds of our oldest citizens, when the first settlers congregated to form the little community. Like Topsy, “it just growed.” As far back as the early seventies (1870s -- BMB), the community east of our present town was called Mountain Home. There are several theories why was given this name, any 1 of which will suffice, the most plausible one seems to be the hilly terrain that possibly reminded the early settlers of the mountains back in their native states.
The little community of Holland’s Mill got its name from the Holland family. This little community with some 3 miles west of our present town. It was distinguished by a post office, a general store in a gin. Mail was brought on horseback from Salado to here three times a week, and distributed among the families strung out along the watercourses of this section largely by chance passers-by, whose business took them by or near the far-flung cabins of the settlers. The information transmitted by the mails was generally weeks and often months old before it reached the people to whom it was addressed.
All traffic was by wagon or on horseback. For many years, Houston was the nearest rail point, and consequently there was little agricultural development here in the early days. There was no market for the products of the soil and beyond growing sufficient for their immediate needs there was no reason for extensive cultivation. Stock raising was the main industry.
Herds were driven to market in Kansas, over the old Chisholm Trail, often requiring months on the trail, with its attendant hardships and the ever constant peril of rustlers Indians and roving bands of bad men who took their toll and often the lives of wayfarers going to and returning from the markets with the cash from their sales.
Was not until the eighties that agriculture began to attain any degree of importance for its commercial value. Many of the settlers coming in from the farms of the Eastern states knew little else than dirt farming and looked to the fertile land for livelihood. By 1875 a railroad had been built as far north as Taylor and that town had been established in the railhead that near to this section offered a means of disposal for cotton and grain and farming here got its real start.
At first the cultivation was resented by the cattlemen as the sod busters wanted to fence their land and keep out the cattle this was a great inconvenience to the cattlemen who had previously allowed their stock to Roman well. The cattlemen were far outnumbered by the influx of farmers, and presently great areas were under fence, and this section was well on its way to becoming the great agricultural center we know today.
Fencing presented its problems. There was little timber and barbed wire had not been invented. Bois d’Arc hedges were planted, and as saplings grew, they were split down the middle and the split sections bent over, intertwined under the next sapling. They continued to grow, and made a very satisfactory fence.
Barbed wire came in the eighties, and human nature then was the same as it is now, and has been since the good old days when Adam munched contentedly on the celebrated Apple in the garden of Eden-- everyone was skeptical of the newfangled contraption that would “cut up half the cattle in the county and scare the rest to death,” as one old-timer put it but there are always a few adventurous souls will try anything once and soon the people began to see that barbed wire was not nearly as dangerous as they expected, and presently it became the common fencing material as it is today. Early barbed wire construction was far different from the variety so common today. The early strands consisted of a flat piece of thin steel with barbs well joined, and was quite expensive. A few pieces of this wire are still giving active service after 50 years of use.
Much of the first agricultural effort was crude, but what the settlers lacked in equipment was compensated by the fertility of the soil -- it was quite a common occurrence produce better than 2 bales of cotton to the acre and hundred bushels of corn.
A great many of the early settlers brought with them nothing but such goods as they could haul in one wagon along with their families. Comforts were rare and luxuries nonexistent. They wrested their livelihoods from the soil by such methods as the ingenuity and resources of the individual could command-- and some of them were primitive indeed. As an example, some of the early cultivators were made from forks tree trunks or limbs. Many of the settlers were artisans capable of turning the raw materials hand practical use. Most of the clothing was homespun and shoes were made from home tanned hides. There were no shoe nails available and box elder or Bois d’Arc was cut into wooden pegs to be used in place of metal brads which came into use much later.
What are early settlers lacked in material goods was amply compensated by their sturdy character, personal integrity, and the cultural influences that came with them from their old homes, and this fine background has influenced development of this section since its founding, and today we have 1 of the finest communities in Texas. It is made up of many descendants of these first families, whose names are too numerous to include in the short sketch. Holland has always fostered and nurtured the best traditions of Americanism, and our people dwelled together as good neighbors in an environment of culture, peace and contentment that makes for happy homes and a measure of prosperity that is enjoyed by few communities the size of this. Holland dates to 1882, with the coming of the Katy railroad, when the two communities of Holland and Mountain Home combined to form the nucleus of the town that is enjoyed a steady and substantial growth. It is never known a boom but this gradual expansion has been of a healthy nature that builds for permanency and solidarity.
The town got its first Charter of Incorporation in 1882 and has functioned as a municipality under the aldermanic form of government to the present. The town is always been well governed and the municipal affairs of been handled efficiently by the elected officers. Taxes here are comparatively low, yet have been sufficient to provide for all public necessities adequately."