After Emancipation, some formerly enslaved African Americans left rural farm life to work as skilled craft workers, including Thomas “Tom” Cook (c. 1840-1898). A South Carolina native, he arrived in Tarrant County in 1857 as an enslaved person. By 1872, Cook moved to Bolivar, and by 1879, he owned a town lot. The 1880 U.S. Census recorded Cook as a blacksmith with a wife, Lethia, and eight children. In 1882, Tom Cook purchased another town lot from blacksmith James Barwis. At that location, he operated a successful blacksmithing business. Cook mended harness parts and shoes for horses, fixed wagons and repaired agricultural equipment. Likely clientele included travelers along the nearby Chisholm Trail, townspeople, and local farmers and ranchers. Cook served the community as a local leader, a Methodist preacher and a member of the Prince Hall Freemasonry Lodge. Tom Cook was buried in the Knox Cemetery. The family later moved to Quakertown (now Quakertown Park), which was founded in 1875 as a freedom colony. A recent archeological dig led by the Texas Department of Transportation pinpointed the former site of Tom Cook’s blacksmith shop. It is the first excavated black-owned and operated blacksmith shop in Texas. The discovery of thousands of artifacts, in addition to local and family oral histories, helped illuminate Cook’s story to a new generation. Despite social, economic and political difficulties, Tom Cook rose from bondage to become a blacksmith, landowner and community leader. (2022)