Old Noxville School

Duane's take

Here's what the official marker has to say about the Old Noxville School, and I'll tell it to you the way it deserves to be told. Out here in Kimble County, where the limestone runs deep and the creeks don't ask permission, somebody had to build something lasting. And around 1880, they did.

The Old Noxville School went up the hard way: the right way. Native limestone, quarried from right nearby, laid by local hands. We're talking about real people with real names worth remembering: Noah Nox, Will Lennon, Lafayette McDonald, J.

H. Parker and his sons. Now, Noah Nox (that name ought to ring a bell), because he's the very man who founded Noxville.

He wasn't just laying stone for someone else's vision. He was building in the town he himself had put on the map. And Noah Nox didn't stop there.

About three hundred yards to the west, he and his wife ran a post office and a store. Think about that for a moment. The school, the store, the post office; the whole heartbeat of Noxville was running through that one family.

For sixty years, children came through the doors of that limestone building. Sixty years of lessons, of seasons changing outside those quarried walls. Then, in 1940, the district consolidated with Harper, and the school's long run as a schoolhouse came to a close.

But here's the thing about a building put up that carefully, by those kinds of hands: it doesn't just sit down and quit. That old school still stands today, serving as the polling place for Precinct 4. The people of the area still walk through that door to make their voices heard.

And if you head about six hundred yards to the northeast, across the creek, you'll find the Noxville cemetery, where, chances are, some of those same hands that laid those stones are resting now. Not a bad legacy for a building that started as a pile of local limestone and somebody's belief that a community was worth building.

What the marker says

Erected about 1880. Used as a school until the district was consolidated with Harper, 1940. Native limestone was quarried nearby, laid by local people including Noah Nox (who founded Noxville), Will Lennon, Lafayette McDonald, J. H. Parker and sons. Nearby (about 300 yds. W) were a post office and store, run by Nox and wife. Building now serves as a polling place for Precinct 4. Noxville cemetery is located across the creek (600 yds. NE). Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1968