Commerce Post Office
Commerce, Hunt County, Texas
Marker Inscription
The U. S. Treasury Department began construction of this building in July 1917, during the country's involvement in World War I. Completed in August 1918 after a number of construction delays, it served as the city's main post office facility until 1971. Deeded to the city the following year, it reopened as a public library in 1973. The Georgian revival-style building features a central entry portico and an alternating parapet/balustrade along the roofline. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1991
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
The U.S. Treasury began this Georgian Revival post office in the summer of 1917, as America entered World War I, and wartime delays pushed its completion into 1918. With its central portico and alternating parapet-and-balustrade roofline, it handled Commerce's mail until 1971 before a second life as the city's public library.
Why it matters
Federal post offices like this one were often a small town's most dignified public building, tying local life to the national government and, here, to the home front of the Great War.
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Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Bruce B. Williams American Legion Post No. 1
Commerce, TX
The first American Legion post in Texas was chartered at Commerce in 1919, the very year the veterans' organization was founded nationally. Moved to act by the funeral of a local soldier who had served in the First World War, a town doctor led the effort, and the post was named for the first Commerce man to die in that war. It went on to prominence at the state and national levels.
Jernigin's Store
Commerce, TX
A Tennessee native and former Arkansas legislator, William Jernigin came to Hunt County in 1856 and, in 1872, opened a mercantile store beside a newly bridged trade route over the South Sulphur River. Because the settlement around his store had no name, he simply asked that goods be shipped to "Commerce" — and the name stuck. The town's later rise as a trading center grew directly from his pioneer venture.
Incorporation of Commerce
Commerce, TX
Commerce traces its roots to Josiah Jackson's 1853 general store, around which the trading village of Cow Hill first grew. When an 1870 bridge shifted the roads, merchants relocated toward a busier crossroads, and by the 1870s the settlement had taken the name Commerce. Voters approved incorporation in 1885, and the town went on to thrive as a Hunt County commercial hub.
Sonora Cemetery
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The Sonora Cemetery began in 1872 with the burial of a child, S. B. McBee, beside the Sonora community's church and school, and it grew to more than seven acres by 1880. When a rail line was completed a mile to the west in 1887, residents drifted to the new town of Fairlie, but the cemetery endured. Today it holds more than 900 graves and still serves the surrounding area.