Pilot Point's Rest Cottage

by Brenda McClurkin

Rest Cottage in Pilot Point provided shelter to unmarried women and their children from 1903 to 1975.

For over seventy years, the quiet northeast Denton County community of Pilot Point was the home of Rest Cottage, a campus that sheltered unmarried mothers and their children. Founded in 1903 by Reverend J. P. Roberts, Rest Cottage was administered by the Rest Cottage Association and members of the Roberts family until its dissolution in 1975. Like Reverend J. T. Upchurch’s Berachah Home in Arlington, Rest Cottage enjoyed a long-term affiliation with the Church of the Nazarene. While the Berachah Home encouraged its new mothers to keep and raise their babies, those born at Rest Cottage were generally adopted by families that waited sometimes up to two years for a child. Licensed as a maternity home and child-placing agency by the State of Texas, Rest Cottage caseworkers placed their wards with evangelical Christian adoptive couples who not only met state requirements but passed their rigorous scrutiny.

The Rest Cottage delivery room and nursery circa the 1940s.

Young women admitted to Rest Cottage could be teenagers, working or professional women, and either single or divorced from their husbands. They could come from any economic, cultural or educational background, and found their way to Pilot Point from all fifty states, Canada and Mexico. Residents were required to pay a small fee for delivery of their babies and a minimal daily fee for board. They brought their own clothing and toiletries, but all other needs--physical, medical, and spiritual--were provided for them. Rest Cottage operations were financed through offerings, donations, gifts, per diem charges, and adoption fees. The Spring 1965 issue of Rest Cottage Messenger reported that nearly 4,300 young women had been received to date, and that 50 women and 41 babies were rendered services in 1964.

The historic main building contained dormitories, sitting rooms and baths for the young women and private quarters for staff. In addition, there was a kitchen, dining room, chapel, reception room, and a delivery room, nursery and convalescent ward (in later years used for emergencies only as births took place in a hospital). Ancillary facilities included dwellings, office, fruit house, storage, laundry, large barn and tool sheds. Rest Cottage structures stood amidst seventy acres of gardens and hay pastures that produced fruit, vegetables, milk and beef for consumption on site. The property also incorporated the former site of Franklin College.

Reverend J. P. Roberts founded Rest Cottage in 1903 and served as its superintendent until 1937.

A collection of records relating to Rest Cottage was donated to Special Collections in July 2008 by Geren Roberts of Oklahoma City. Mr. Roberts is the grandson of Reverend John Floyd Roberts, brother of the institution’s founder and superintendent of Rest Cottage from 1937 to 1955. His father, Dr. Geren C. Roberts, also served as superintendent of this home for unwed girls from 1955 until 1975. The institution’s archival records include organizational, legal, financial and administrative documents; photographs; and extensive issues of its newsletters, the Rescue Messenger (1920-1929) and the Rest Cottage Messenger (1945-1968). An application for admission and guidelines for selecting adoptive parents are among the papers. It should be noted that official records of births at Rest Cottage have been turned over to the State of Texas and are not part of this collection.

The Rest Cottage Records beautifully complement UT Arlington’s Berachah Home Collection, and will be of great interest to researchers in social history and women’s studies.

For additional information on the Rest Cottage Records, contact Brenda McClurkin at 817-272-3393 or mcclurkin@uta.edu. 

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