Kemp

Kemp is named for a woman. The Handbook of Texas says the community took its name from Malvina Kemp Watkins, wife of first postmaster John Marr Watkins, when the post office opened in 1851; the plaque names Levi Noble as first postmaster, and the sources leave this unresolved. In 1870 Dr. A. J. Still bought land north of the settlement, platted it, and offered the Southern Pacific lots to build across it, while Sam Parmalee offered right-of-way. The line reached Kemp in the mid-1880s, and the Handbook says Kemp became a terminus.

What the plaque says

Kemp Kemp This community can trace its origins to 1851, when the U.S. Postal Service approved a station named Kemp with Levi Noble as first postmaster. In the years prior to the Civil War, Kemp was primarily an agricultural community, providing goods and services for the surrounding farm families. Itinerant Presbyterian preacher R.O. Watkins settled near Kemp about 1855 and in 1867 began the Kemp Academy to provide a strong educational center for the schoolchildren in the area. It was the construction of the Texas Trunk Railroad in the 1880s, however, that boosted Kemp's growth and development. The Texas Trunk was built to connect Dallas with points east and south and later became part of the Texas and New Orleans Rail Line. As the tracks reached Kaufman (10 mi. N) in 1881, the county surveyor was laying out a town plat for Kemp along the projected rail line. By 1882, one year before the railroad even reached Kemp, the community boasted two dry goods stores, a drugstore, grocery, saloon, saddle shop, barbershop, blacksmith, three church congregations and a steam gin and mill. Although the actual date of Kemp's incorporation has not been determined, it is known that the citizens voted to abolish their incorporation in 1910 and then elected to reincorporate in 1922. Kemp continued to grow, serving as a trade center for the surrounding farms and ranches. Although the end of World War II signaled a shift in the population to more urban areas, Kemp remains an important community in the history of Kaufman County. (2002)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• No. 1 British Flying Training School Museum — 19 mi
  A free museum at Terrell's airport where about 2,200 RAF cadets learned to fly between 1941 and 1945, with logbooks, uniforms, letters and original training aircraft.
• Petroleum Industry Park — 28 mi
  The pipes and drilling tower mark where a city water well struck oil on June 9, 1894, the start of the first Texas field to produce oil and gas in important quantities.

More markers nearby

• Capt. Edward Thomas Broughton and the Johnson Guards — 7.9 mi
• Prairieville — 7.9 mi
• Mabank — 8.5 mi
• First Presbyterian Church of Mabank — 9.1 mi