Kemp
Kemp, Kaufman County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Kemp This community can trace its origins to 1851, when the U.S. Postal Service approved a station named Kemp with Levi Noble as first postmaster. In the years prior to the Civil War, Kemp was primarily an agricultural community, providing goods and services for the surrounding farm families. Itinerant Presbyterian preacher R.O. Watkins settled near Kemp about 1855 and in 1867 began the Kemp Academy to provide a strong educational center for the schoolchildren in the area. It was the construction of the Texas Trunk Railroad in the 1880s, however, that boosted Kemp's growth and development. The Texas Trunk was built to connect Dallas with points east and south and later became part of the Texas and New Orleans Rail Line. As the tracks reached Kaufman (10 mi. N) in 1881, the county surveyor was laying out a town plat for Kemp along the projected rail line. By 1882, one year before the railroad even reached Kemp, the community boasted two dry goods stores, a drugstore, grocery, saloon, saddle shop, barbershop, blacksmith, three church congregations and a steam gin and mill. Although the actual date of Kemp's incorporation has not been determined, it is known that the citizens voted to abolish their incorporation in 1910 and then elected to reincorporate in 1922. Kemp continued to grow, serving as a trade center for the surrounding farms and ranches. Although the end of World War II signaled a shift in the population to more urban areas, Kemp remains an important community in the history of Kaufman County. (2002)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Kemp's story begins in 1851 with a U.S. post office and its first postmaster, Levi Noble, anchoring an agricultural settlement that served surrounding farm families before the Civil War. A traveling Presbyterian preacher founded the Kemp Academy in 1867, but it was the Texas Trunk Railroad in the 1880s that truly spurred growth — by 1882, a year before the tracks even arrived, the town already boasted dry-goods stores, a saloon, blacksmith, three churches, and a steam gin and mill. Kemp incorporated, dissolved in 1910, and reincorporated in 1922 as it settled into life as a farm-trade center.
Why it matters
Kemp is a textbook case of the railroad town, where the mere promise of coming tracks could conjure a bustling commercial center out of the Texas prairie almost overnight.
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Related people
- · Levi Noble
- · R.O. Watkins
Themes & tags
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