Courtesy of Dallas Municipal Archives.
The northmost part of the North Lake Highlands area has a number of graceful, sloping hills. On one of them, a major thoroughfare extending from a few blocks north of LBJ down to Northwest Highway, is Audelia Road. Long before it was inside the city, it was a county road. And before that it was a wagon road. It was pretty rugged until it was improved and paved in the late 1930s through Works Progress Administration funding.
Beyond indigenous inhabitation, The Jackson family were among the earliest settlers of the area, members of the Peters Colony. John Jackson, War of 1812 veteran, obtained a land grant in 1842. Jackson and his wife had ten daughters and sons. One of their many grandchildren was Ellen Ardelia Jackson West (1853-1899). She married John F. West — also namesake of a street — who jointly owned the general store at the southeast corner of Audelia and Forest Lane with Ardelia’s father. The store was itself named Ardelia, which likely led to the community’s name as well as the road. One of the store’s managers over the years was JT Rhoton, who was also postmaster for the community and later the second mayor of Carrollton.
So how did Ardelia morph into Audelia? No one really knows, but perhaps southern accents and drawls gradually changed the name. And what became of the community? Besides the store there was a cotton gin, a grist mill, a one-room school, and a post office in the back of the store. The post office was closed in 1904. In the WPA Guide to Dallas, which was finished about 1940 but not published until 1992, Audelia is referred to as a “tiny crossroads village” with a population of 35.
Beyond the village, of course, is the road. Before maps showing named roads in the north Dallas area, Audelia was a long, straight wagon road. It’s visible in the famous 1900 Sam Street Map of Dallas County. The name was stuck to the road early in the 20th century, but contemporary maps include the name Audelia starting about 1940. City records indicate the subdivisions up and down Audelia Road were annexed into Dallas from the mid to late 1950s into the early 1960s.
Ardelia herself died in 1899 and is buried with other family members and Ardelia inhabitants in the McCree Cemetery just off Audelia and Estate Lane. The cemetery’s earliest burial is 1862 and also holds members of the Rogers and Little Egypt communities, both well connected historically to Audelia Road.
John Slate is the city archivist for the Dallas Municipal Archives.
