Jellico

Duane's take

Here's my telling of what the official marker has to say about Jellico, out in Tarrant County. Now, Robert Emmett Wilson came with his family to this area during the 1880s, and he did what a man does when he's trying to build something from nothing: he put up a general store near this very site. People settled in around him, the way they do when someone's willing to open a door and keep the lights on.

And for a while, Jellico was a real going concern. By 1895, this little community had itself a cotton gin, a blacksmith shop, a grist mill, a syrup press, and a school. That is not a small list for a place most maps forgot to mention.

Now, the name Jellico, that came officially in 1898, when a post office was established and the community needed something to call itself. They named it after a town in Tennessee, from which some of the settlers had immigrated. So there was a little piece of Tennessee sitting right there in Tarrant County, keeping the memory of somewhere else alive.

But 1907 is where the story turns quiet. Cotton prices fell, and when cotton prices fall in a cotton town, everything downstream feels it. Wilson's General Store, the very thing Robert Emmett Wilson had planted here decades before, closed in 1912.

The school got consolidated into another district. And just like that, Jellico began its long fade. Some towns go out loud.

Jellico went out the way a fire does when there's nothing left to burn; slowly, and without much fuss.

What the marker says

Robert Emmett Wilson came with his family to this area during the 1880s and built a general store near this site. The name Jellico was chosen for the community when a post office was established in 1898. The town was named after a town in Tennessee from which some of the settlers had immigrated. By 1895, Jellico had a cotton gin, blacksmith shop, grist mil, syrup press, and school. The town began to decline when cotton prices fell in 1907. Wilson's General Store closed in 1912, and the school was consolidated into another district. (1985)