Ham (Pauline)
Eustace, Henderson County, Texas
Marker Inscription
By 1900, a community had developed here on property owned by the Texas and New Orleans Railroad, which laid tracks through the area to create a more direct path to Dallas. The company purchased land in 1898 from attorney Marshal Hamlet "Ham" Gossett. The new town was named Ham in his honor.The settlement grew as many residents moved here to take advantage of the area's land, which was well suited for ranching and farming. By the early years of the 20th century, Ham had three general merchandise stores, a cotton gin, a school and a church building which was used for worship servies, town meetings and social events. The local school was housed in a one-room structure before residents added a second room to accommodate a growing population. In the 1930s, the school consolidated with Eustace School District. Also during that decade, a cannery opened in the community.From its early years, Ham also had a post office; one of the earliest postmasters in the settlement was Henry M. Faulk. Town lore indicates that Faulk made a request to rename the town to Pauline in an attempt to win the admiration of Pauline Riddle, a schoolteacher. The community officially changed its name to Pauline in 1912. By the 1930s, a number of factors, including poor economic conditions and several typhoid fever outbreaks, led to the slow decline of the Pauline community. In 1976, the railroad removed its area tracks and rerouted. Today, few vestiges remain of Pauline, which is remembered as a once-thriving community whose pioneering residents endured trying circumstances. (2008)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Around 1900 a community grew up on land the Texas and New Orleans Railroad had bought from attorney Marshal Hamlet "Ham" Gossett, and the town took the name Ham in his honor. Farming and ranching drew settlers, and the town gained stores, a cotton gin, a cannery, a school, and a church. Renamed Pauline in 1912 after a postmaster's romantic gesture, the community faded through Depression hardship and typhoid outbreaks, and all but vanished after the tracks were pulled in 1976.
Why it matters
The rise and disappearance of Ham/Pauline captures how railroads created, then abandoned, countless small towns across rural America.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
At the turn of the twentieth century, the railroad was the single most powerful force shaping the map of rural America. Where the tracks went, towns were born; where they bypassed, towns withered. This community owes its very existence to a rail line laid to carve a more direct path toward Dallas, and the ground it grew on belonged to the railroad itself.
The surrounding country was well suited to ranching and farming, and that combination — good land plus a new rail connection — was exactly the recipe that spun up hundreds of small settlements across Texas in this era. People moved in to work the land and to be near the tracks that could carry their cotton and goods to market.
It was an optimistic moment. A place that had been open country suddenly had reason to become a town, and for a couple of decades it did just that — a small but genuine community with the institutions of permanence: stores, a gin, a school, a church.
People & events
The town took its first name, Ham, from Marshal Hamlet 'Ham' Gossett, the attorney whose land the railroad purchased in 1898. As settlers arrived, the place filled out quickly. By the early 1900s it had three general merchandise stores, a cotton gin, a school, and a church building that doubled as the setting for worship, town meetings, and social gatherings. When the one-room schoolhouse grew crowded, residents simply added a second room.
The town's most charming chapter is one the marker itself frames as lore. An early postmaster, Henry Faulk, is remembered as having asked to rename the town Pauline — the story goes, to win the favor of a schoolteacher named Pauline Riddle. Whatever the truth of the romance, the name did change officially in 1912, and Pauline it became.
The good years did not last. Through the 1930s a hard combination of poor economic conditions and repeated outbreaks of typhoid fever wore the community down. The final blow came from the same force that had created it: in 1976 the railroad pulled up its tracks and rerouted, and the town that the rails had made all but disappeared with them.
Its place in the American story
The rise and fall of Ham, later Pauline, is a compact retelling of one of the great patterns of American history. Across the country, railroads conjured towns into being almost overnight — and just as surely, when the economics shifted or the tracks moved, they let those towns die. The map of rural America is dotted with such ghosts.
What makes these vanished places matter is that they were real. People built stores and schools here, worshiped and married and buried their dead, endured epidemics, and pinned their hopes on land and rails. The typhoid outbreaks that helped empty the town are a sober reminder of how vulnerable small communities were before modern public health.
And the town's very dependence on the railroad is the lesson. A settlement created by a corporate decision to lay track could be undone by a corporate decision to lift it. The story of Pauline is the story of countless American places that lived and died by the line on the map.
If you visit
Do not come expecting a town — come expecting its absence. This is a landmark to a place that has nearly vanished, and the experience is one of imagination: standing in ordinary countryside and picturing the stores, the gin, the schoolhouse with its added second room, the church where the whole community gathered.
Let the marker be your guide to what once stood here. Read it, then look around at the fields and consider how completely a thriving community can fade back into farmland. The quiet is the point; the emptiness is the history.
Ghost-town markers make wonderful punctuation on a rural road trip, rewarding travelers who like their history unpolished and their landscapes uncrowded. Bring your curiosity and a willingness to slow down — and enjoy the small, human detail that the town may have been renamed as a gesture of courtship. It is the kind of story that makes an empty stretch of road unforgettable.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Themes & tags
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