Ely

Ely was mostly one family. Tom Hymer's history for the Fannin County Historical Commission says the place was inhabited almost entirely by Levi and Laura Ely and their sons, with Forrest running the general store and Robert L. preaching. The two-teacher school's second story served as a hall for the Woodmen and the Odd Fellows. Dr. George W. Cobb brought the first car in 1912. The community reached its high point in 1895 with 56 people, on a road promoted as the Ocean Highway, and the Handbook says its population never topped fifty.

What the plaque says

Ely A veteran of the Civil War, Levi Wells Ely (1829-1904) and his wife Laura (Page) migrated to this area from Georgia in 1882. The settlement that grew up around their farm became known as the Ely community. Settlers were attracted to this cotton-producing area by the fertile soil and nearby rail lines. Ely was the site of a general store, cotton gin, blacksmith shop, barber shop, and churches. A post office, opened in 1895, closed in 1905. A school was located here until 1949 when it was consolidated with the Whitewright District. (1980)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Sam Rayburn House State Historic Site — 6.5 mi
  The two-story farmhouse west of Bonham that the longtime Speaker of the House built in 1916 and kept as his home, left as he lived in it and open as a museum since 1975.
• Eisenhower Birthplace State Historic Site — 20 mi
  The small frame house beside the Katy tracks in Denison where Dwight Eisenhower was born in 1890, bought by townspeople in 1946 and given to Texas in 1958.
• Eisenhower State Park — 26 mi
  A bluff-top park on Lake Texoma opened in 1958 on land leased from the Corps of Engineers, in the Red River country of Fort Johnson, Colbert's Ferry and the Butterfield stages.
• Hagerman National Wildlife Refuge — 29 mi
  A 1946 refuge on the Big Mineral Arm of Lake Texoma, laid over land bought for Denison Dam and the site of the vanished railroad town of Hagerman, now a winter stop for geese.

More markers nearby

• Lindsey-Randolph Cemetery — 4.2 mi
• Ector Lodge No. 687, A. F. & A. M. — 4.4 mi
• Ector Methodist Church — 4.5 mi
• Whitewright Masonic Lodge No. 167 — 4.8 mi