Bibb Community

Bibb was also called Bibb Mission. The Handbook says an estimated fifty people lived there by 1884, with a school and a church, and that the community shipped cotton and livestock. A small store opened in 1885. By 1896 it had two grocery stores, a cotton gin, a flour mill, and Christian and Methodist churches. The population peaked at 176 in 1900. Decline came quickly: the post office closed in 1909, and by the 1930s Bibb no longer appeared on county maps.

What the plaque says

Bibb Community The town of Bibb began when Anglo settlers moved to the area in the 1870s to farm cotton. Perhaps among the first settlers was John Wesley (1834-1924) and Floellar (Flullah) (Williams) Morris (1839-1903). The couple arrived from Alabama around 1869. The Bibb post office was established in 1878; located at the Morris home. On March 13, 1891, seven men filed paperwork officially platting the town of Bibb with 44 lots centered on Main and Water streets. The seven included: J.P. Green, W.C. Jackson, C.W. Atchison, A.J. Whitaker, D. Pierce, J.H. Bridges and T.G. Preston. In the 1890s, Bibb had two cotton gins, three general stores, two drug stores, a school, one broom factory, one saloon, a Masonic lodge and an Odd Fellows lodge. The town also had four churches: a Primitive Baptist church, a Methodist Episcopal church, a Missionary Baptist church and a Church of Christ, which met in a building where the roadside park is today. As the population grew, their education needs grew as well. In 1907, an independent school district was formed. Unfortunately, the original schoolhouse burned, but the town rebuilt. The second school was a two-story building with two rooms downstairs, one for lower grades, one for upper grades. The upstairs housed a meeting hall for the Odd Fellows and Masons. In 1912, Bibb had 101 students. In 1926, Bibb ISD folded into Beattie ISD. The Bibb school was subsequently moved to Beattie. The village is shown on a 1920 map, but as transportation and roads began to improve, the town's population began to decrease. Today, Bibb is a ghost town with no trace remaining. Yet Bibb is remembered as an important community in western Comanche County for many decades. (2022)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Lake Brownwood State Park — 20 mi
  A CCC park on a reservoir that filled in a single flood before its dam was done, with stone cabins, a hilltop dance pavilion and a grand staircase climbed by dancers arriving by boat.
• Dublin Bottling Works — 24 mi
  The Erath County plant that bottled Dr Pepper with cane sugar from 1891 until a 2012 settlement ended its Dr Pepper license, and that still makes its own sodas the same way.

More markers nearby

• Community of Sidney — 3.4 mi
• Sipe Springs Cemetery — 8.3 mi
• Mollie E. Moore — 9.6 mi
• Hardin, John Wesley — 9.6 mi