From the Texas historical marker:
“In 1866, Confederate John J. Dial (d.1928) joined a group of 60 wagons headed for Texas. He arrived in this area the same year and soon began farming the land. With the 1882 arrival of the Kansas and Gulf Short Line Railroad, Dial opened a general store near the rail line. The following year, Dial and his wife, Ida Mae (Jones), deeded eight acres of land to the railroad for a flag stop station. The town site he platted at the site of the station was named Dialville when the post office was established in 1885.”
“There was little growth in Dialville until 1897, when the flourishing tomato and peach production and shipping business revitalized the area. In that year, John T. Bailey opened a store and reactivated the post office. Dialville’s first school was established in 1899. C. D. Jarratt, a leading East Texas fruit and vegetable sales agent, arrived about 1900 and helped develop the town into a leading shipping point for tomatoes and peaches.”
“Dialville was the scene of much commercial activity during the early years of the 20th century, but by the mid 1920s had begun to decline. It remains an important part of the regional and agricultural history of Cherokee County.”
The general store’s last proprietors were Jerry and Rebecca Barker, who purchased the location in 2008. An episode of True Crime on Oxygen featured the story of how Rebecca shot and killed her husband at their nearby house in 2014. She had previously shot her first husband, who thankfully survived that incident.
A life-long resident shared fond memories of going to the store as a child and how, in more recent years, a cafe at the far end had such popular catfish that cars would line up down the road.
