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More on Dobbin Texas
DOBBIN, TEXAS. Dobbin is on
Lake Creek at the junction of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe, the Burlington
Northern, and the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific railroads, near the
intersection of State Highway 105 and Farm Road 1486 in western Montgomery
County. The earliest mention of the area comes from the French explorer René
Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, who camped northwest of the site of Dobbin
on February 14, 1687. One of the first families to settle in the area was that
of Noah and Ester Wightman Griffith, natives of New York state, who received a
Mexican land grant there in 1831.
In 1878 the Central and
Montgomery Railway built a line through the area from Navasota to Montgomery. A
post office was established in 1880 under the name
Bobbin. In 1885 Bobbin was a shipping point for
cotton and lumber and had daily mail service, four sawmills, a gristmill, a
flour mill, a church, a district school, two general stores, a physician, and a
population of 100. By the 1890s the settlement had a Baptist church, a cotton
gin, W. G. Post's sawmill, J. M. Stinson's general store, two livestock dealers,
one combination mill and gin, a blacksmith, and a population of 250. In 1903-04
the town had three one-teacher schools; one had thirty-seven white students, a
second had eighteen white students, and the third had forty-three black
students. By this time the population had declined to 168.
In 1906 or 1907 the Trinity
and Brazos Valley Railway built through Bobbin on its way from Mexia to Houston,
making the town a railroad junction. In 1909 the town's name was changed to
Dobbin. By 1915 the population was 100, and local businesses included three
general stores, two blacksmith shops, a drugstore, and a grocery. In 1926 Dobbin
School was established. By the late 1940s the community had three churches, two
schools, two sawmills, two factories, nine businesses, the railroad station,
several dwellings, and a population of 175. In 1965 Dobbin had a post-peeling
plant. In the late 1960s the population was 106, and in the early 1970s it was
170. In 1990 the town comprised Mock's Feed Store and Grocery, the post office,
the Dobbin station of the Montgomery Fire Department, two churches, and a
collection of dwellings; the population was estimated at 200.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Robin Navarro
Montgomery, The History of Montgomery County (Austin: Jenkins, 1975).
Montgomery County Genealogical Society, Montgomery County History
(Winston-Salem, North Carolina: Hunter, 1981).
Will Branch
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