Personville

B. D. Person, a North Carolina native, moved from Shelby County, Tennessee, to Shelby County, Texas, in 1851 and to this site in 1854. The Handbook of Texas says the place then held a few families, a blacksmith shop and a dramshop, and that some early residents wanted to call it Lost Prairie. By 1857 it had six or eight houses, three dry-goods stores, two groceries, a bowling alley and a cotton gin. After the Nelleva cutoff was abandoned in 1933, the population slid from about 300 in 1929 to twenty by 1967.

What the plaque says

Personville Behind this marker is town site of Personville, begun in 1854 by Benjamin D. Person, Sr. 1855 postmaster was Wm. Person. Grayson Masonic Lodge 265, chartered 1861, demised 1889. Nelleva cut-off, built in 1906 was abandoned 1933. J. D. Hudson was first teacher in district school, 1908. By 1915 had blacksmith shop, lumber yard, bank, hotel, 12 mercantiles, two drugstores, three doctors. Dr. G. H. Stephens was outstanding. Fire razed town, October 1916. Rebuilt, it soon faded away. Post office was abolished 1952. (1963)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Old Fort Parker — 13 mi
  A rebuilt 1830s family stockade near the Navasota River, where a May 1836 attack killed men of the Parker settlement and took five captives, among them nine-year-old Cynthia Ann Parker.
• Confederate Reunion Grounds State Historic Site — 16 mi
  Where Limestone County Confederate veterans gathered each summer from 1888, later a water supplier in the Mexia oil boom, now a Texas Historical Commission site on the Navasota River.
• Blind Lemon Memorial Cemetery — 21 mi
  The Freestone County grave of the Texas blues singer Blind Lemon Jefferson, who recorded for Paramount in Chicago from 1926 and died there in December 1929.
• Fort Boggy State Park — 30 mi
  A 1,847-acre park in Leon County named for a settlers' palisade of 1840, with a 15-acre lake, short trails and the story of Tennessee farmers, the Keechi and a Ranger captain.

More markers nearby

• Lost Prairie Cemetery and Church — 2.2 mi
• Site of Worthy Store — 7.1 mi
• William Rufus Boyd, Jr. — 7.9 mi
• Furney Richardson High School — 8.0 mi