The land that became Haslet was open prairie roughly fifteen miles north of Fort Worth. The Handbook of Texas places the first settlement of the area around 1880. The City of Haslet’s own history reaches a little earlier: about 1872, it says, two or three families lived in the vicinity, but there were not yet enough children to start a school.
A school built on campaign donations
Before there was a schoolhouse, Miss Alice Curtis taught classes in the home of one of the local families. In 1879, an election year, residents asked the candidates for donations toward a school building. By the end of the campaign, a committee that included C. F. Mitchell had raised about $150, and a building went up.
It was first called Blue Mound School. Miss Lizzie Curtis was the first teacher in the new building. About seven years later the building was loaded onto wagons and moved roughly half a mile north.
Charles L. Maloney arrives
In 1882 Charles L. Maloney, a native of Ireland, came to the Blue Mound area with his brother-in-law, H. C. Hurley of Fort Worth. Maloney began raising shorthorn Durham cattle, and the city’s history credits him with one of the first such herds in the county.
Maloney would live in the community for the rest of his life. He died in 1938 at age 96, and his ranch sits at the center of the story of how Haslet got its name.
