Cumby

Black Jack Grove had a rougher name than the plaque admits. The Handbook of Texas calls it a tough frontier town where the worst people in the county gathered and fights were common, and on Christmas Day 1866 a gun battle over a horse race left five men dead. Its men formed Company K of the Ninth Texas Cavalry, the first to plant a flag in the Union battery at Elkhorn. The Handbook says the railroad and post office pushed for a new name in 1886, when Congressman David B. Culberson suggested Cumby; the plaque says 1896.

What the plaque says

Cumby The grove of black jack trees which gave this town its original name was near an Indian camping ground. The trees stood atop the highest point in present Hopkins County. An Indian trail that crossed the grove later became a major wagon freighting route. Black Jack Grove Post Office opened in 1848 in the home of John W. Matthews, the first postmaster. In 1851 D. W. Cole purchased a tract of land that included the grove from Elizabeth Wren and began selling town lots. Cole operated a store and gave land for the first Masonic Lodge building. Henry Bingham ran a tavern which also served as a hotel. By 1860, Black Jack Grove was a thriving settlement with several stores, two physicians, two blacksmiths, and other tradesmen. A log structure housed the school. Later a vacant store served as a school and church facility. To avoid confusion with another Black Jack Post Office, the town was renamed in 1896 for legislator and Confederate veteran Robert H. Cumby. After 1900, two banks opened and the town incorporated. Later the population began to decline as improved highways lessened Cumby's importance as a trading center. One of Cumby's best-known citizens was the noted author Ben K. Green (1912-1974). (1979)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Audie Murphy / American Cotton Museum — 14 mi
  A Greenville museum of Hunt County's military heroes, including Audie Murphy, and of cotton, which keeps the engine of what it says was the world's largest inland cotton compress.
• Cooper Lake State Park — 18 mi
  Two units on Jim Chapman Lake, a Corps reservoir proposed in the late 1930s, stalled by a lawsuit until 1984 and dedicated in 1991, with a 10.5-mile equestrian trail and wildlife land around it.

More markers nearby

• Site of Plunkett School — 2.8 mi
• Mt. Zion Churches and Cemetery — 4.5 mi
• Site of Henry and Emerson Colleges — 6.5 mi
• Oakland Cumberland Presbyterian Church — 6.6 mi