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HOMER,
TEXASFormer
Angelina County Seat, East
Texas
Highway 69
6 Miles SE of Lufkin
Population:
360 (est. 2000) Book
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Homer
Centennial Marker at the church on the corner of PeeWee Smith & 323
Photo courtesy
Sarah
Reveley, July 2008 |
History in a Pecan
Shell
Homer became the Angelina County Seat in 1858 after defeating
Jonesville in a contested election.
Homer’s name was changed to Angelina at this time, but the name didn’t gain favor
and it was officially changed back to Homer in 1862.
Marion, Texas (being
the first Angelina County seat) had retained the county’s first (log) courthouse.
Since Jonesville never built one,
the courthouse was dismantled and moved to Homer where it was used until it was
replaced by a two-story frame building in 1873.
Homer became the county’s
most important town – with only Lufkin
as a near rival. The tables were turned in the early 1880s when the Houston, East
and West Texas Railroad bypassed Homer in favor of the more direct path through
Lufkin.
Homer, even at
its high-water mark never had more than 500 residents but the bypassing didn’t
cause it to wither. It retained the courthouse and a population in the 300s through
the rest of the 1880s.
In late 1891, Homer’s courthouse burned. The more
prosperous city of Lufkin became
county seat the following year. This official shift did cost Homer its population.
By 1904 the population was down to 166 people and ten years later it was a mere
75. It increased in the 20s to just over a hundred. It received a shot in the
arm in the 1960s and was incorporated in 1971. The population had increased to
360 by the 1990s – with that figure given to the 2000 Census.
See also
Lufkin - Angelina County Seat
Angelina
County Courthouse | |
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