Moody

Moody's post office opened in November 1881 with J. H. Morrison as postmaster, and the weekly Monitor began printing in 1883. By 1884 the town had four churches, four cotton gins, two steam gristmills, a school and 250 residents. It became its own school district in 1889. A private bank opened in 1893, and by the early 1890s about 800 people lived there. Moody voted to incorporate in 1901 with a mayor and council, and the 1900 count was 848. Estimates reached 1,800 by the late 1920s before the Depression thinned the town.

What the plaque says

Moody The town of Moody can trace its history ot the pre-civil war settlement of Perry (2 mi. N). In 1881, the Gulf, Colorado & Santa Fe Railroad bypassed Perry, and a new town was platted on the land of early settler William Naler. Col. W.L. Moody of Galveston who supervised the laying of track in the area, named the town in honor of his family. Incorporated in 1901, the Moody community has thrived over the years and is the home of various fraternal, educational, commercial, religious, and medical institutions and organizations. (1986)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Mother Neff State Park — 6.5 mi
  A Leon River park that grew from six acres Isabella Neff left the state in her 1921 will, where Civilian Conservation Corps Company 817 built a stone tower, a pavilion and roads in the 1930s.
• Temple Railroad and Heritage Museum — 15 mi
  The Santa Fe depot of 1911 in a railroad town that began in 1880 as a construction camp, now a museum with locomotives and cars parked beside the active rail yard.
• Armstrong Browning Library — 22 mi
  A three-story Italian Renaissance library on the Baylor campus built to hold A. J. Armstrong's Browning collection, dedicated in December 1951 and now, by its own account, the world's largest of Browning material.
• Dr Pepper Museum — 22 mi
  The 1906 bottling plant of the Artesian Manufacturing and Bottling Company, built where Dr Pepper outgrew a Waco drugstore soda fountain, now the Dr Pepper Museum.

More markers nearby

• First Baptist Church of Moody — 0.3 mi
• Old Perry Cemetery — 1.9 mi
• Moody-Leon United Methodist Church — 5.7 mi
• First Baptist Church of Eddy — 6.4 mi