Kicaster Community

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'm passing it right along to you. Way down in Wilson County, there's a place called Kicaster, and if you blink you'll miss it, because that's kind of the whole story. But let's back up, because it starts with people, the way the best stories do.

In the 1860s, families came to this patch of Texas and put roots in the ground. The Crows, the Spiveys, the Camps, the Watkinses, the Fergusons, the Pittmans, Dr. W.

R. Callaway, and others whose names the record still holds. Farming families, planting themselves as deliberately as any crop.

Then in 1872, a man named John James donated land for a schoolhouse, and because a schoolhouse on the frontier does double duty, that's where church services were held too. One building, doing the work of two, which is a very Texas arrangement. The community was growing, putting down the kind of infrastructure that says, we intend to stay.

And in 1887, A. C. and Mary Anderson gave more land for public use. That same year, a post office opened under the name Easterling.

Now, a post office is a serious thing. It means a place is real enough that letters need to find it. But the name Easterling didn't stick, because there was a creek nearby called Kicaster, and before long the post office took that name instead.

Kicaster. It had a ring to it. The post office ran until 1906, when it closed.

The school kept going longer, but it was phased out in 1940. And the churches, they moved away. One by one, the things that hold a community together, the school, the post office, the congregation, they were gone.

What remained was the cemetery. Kicaster Cemetery, in use since the 1870s, is still there today, and the marker will tell you plainly: it now marks the site of the community. Not the community itself.

The site of it. That's a sentence worth letting sit for a moment. The people came, they farmed, they built a school and named a post office and gave land to each other for the common good.

And what endures is where they laid their dead. Kicaster Cemetery, still keeping the name, still keeping the ground.

What the marker says

The families of Isaac Crow, R. T. Spivey, Dr. W. R. Callaway, T. P. Camp, J. E. Watkins, Isom Ferguson, L. B. Pittman, and others began a farming settlement here in the 1860s. John James donated land for a schoolhouse (1872), where church services were also held. A. C. and Mary Anderson in 1887 gave more land for public use. Easterling post office, opened in 1887, was soon renamed Kicaster for nearby creek, but closed in 1906. The school was phased out in 1940, and the churches moved away. Kicaster Cemetery, in use since the 1870s, now marks the site of the community. (1975)