Kit Community
Irving, Dallas County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Virginia natives John W. and Jestine Gorbit had a farm in this area by 1850. A settlement known as Gorbit grew up around it and became a stop on a pre-Civil War postal route. In 1855, Jonathan Story moved here from Illinois with his wife and 13 children. Story's son, Isaac "Ike," who later returned to Illinois for several years, settled in Gorbit with his wife and children in 1873. He opened a store and in 1889 established a post office; his second wife, Mary Elizabeth, was the first postmaster. Because of confusion with a similarly named town, the Gorbit post office and settlement were renamed Kit in 1894. Residents established Kit Cemetery in 1896 near Ike Story's store. Early area schools included one that began in the late 1850s, with Hezekiah Lucas as teacher. Mark Callister Lively opened a school in 1890. Lively School served the Kit Community and functioned as the worship space for the area's first Catholic and Church of Christ congregations. Kit residents established Kit School in 1902. The Town of Irving was founded in 1903 west of the community, along the tracks of the Rock Island Railroad. Some of Kit's businesses and churches moved to the new townsite. The post office moved to Irving in 1904. Irving residents petitioned the legislature for a school district in 1909, and the Kit and Lively schools ecame the Irving Independent School District. Kit maintained its own identity for several more years, but by the 1940s, its once agricultural character had vanished into the growing City of Irving and the Dallas-Fort Worth metropolitan area. Today in Kit Cemetery, which is adjacent to Oak Grove Cemetery, are found the names of pioneer amilies - Story, Smith, Cox and many others - who contributed to the growth and development of Irving. (2005)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
John W. and Jestine Gorbit farmed here by 1850, and a settlement called Gorbit grew up around them as a stop on a pre–Civil War postal route. After Ike Story opened a store and post office in 1889, confusion with a similarly named town led to the settlement being renamed Kit in 1894, and residents added a cemetery and schools. When the railroad town of Irving was founded nearby in 1903, Kit's businesses, churches, and post office drifted to the new townsite, and by the 1940s the community had faded into the growing metropolis.
Why it matters
Kit is one of the countless rural crossroads communities absorbed and erased by the rise of metropolitan North Texas.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
Before there was a city of Irving, there was open prairie in the northern reaches of a young Texas, and the families who settled it in the mid-1800s were true frontier people. When John and Jestine Gorbit were farming here by 1850, Texas had been a state for only a few years, the Civil War was still a decade off, and a rural settlement's lifeline to the wider world was the postal route that a rider or stage carried through it.
That is how tiny inland communities came into being: a farm, then a cluster of neighbors, then a store and a post office, and — almost as soon as there were enough children — a school. The name on the map often came from whichever family got there first or ran the post office, which is why so many vanished Texas hamlets carry a surname or a nickname rather than anything grand.
The marker's community sat at the hinge between two eras — the horse-and-wagon frontier of the 1850s and the railroad age that arrived at the turn of the century. Understanding it means holding both pictures at once: an isolated farming settlement finding its feet, and the fast-moving new century that would eventually swallow it.
People & events
It began with the Gorbits, Virginia natives whose farm gave the settlement its first name — Gorbit — and a place on a pre-Civil War postal route. In 1855 Jonathan Story arrived from Illinois with his wife and thirteen children, the kind of large migrating family that populated whole neighborhoods at a stroke. One of those children, Isaac "Ike" Story, would become the community's central figure.
Ike went back to Illinois for a spell before returning for good in 1873 with a family of his own. He opened a store, and in 1889 he established a post office — with his second wife, Mary Elizabeth, serving as the first postmaster. Because the Gorbit name kept getting confused with another, similarly named town, the settlement and its post office were rechristened Kit in 1894. Two years later the residents laid out Kit Cemetery near Ike's store, and schooling deepened its roots: an early school had run since the late 1850s under teacher Hezekiah Lucas, Mark Callister Lively opened another in 1890, and the community established Kit School in 1902. Lively's schoolhouse did double duty as the worship space for the area's first Catholic and Church of Christ congregations.
Then the railroad changed everything. In 1903 the town of Irving was founded just to the west, along the Rock Island tracks, and the pull of the rail line was irresistible. Kit's businesses and churches began drifting to the new townsite; the post office followed in 1904. When residents petitioned for a school district in 1909, the Kit and Lively schools folded into the new Irving Independent School District. Kit held onto its name for a few more years, but by the 1940s its farm-town character had dissolved into the spreading Dallas–Fort Worth metropolis.
Its place in the American story
Kit is a near-perfect specimen of a story repeated thousands of times across America: the crossroads community that thrives for two or three generations and then quietly disappears when a railroad — or later a highway — chooses a route a few miles away. Towns did not need to fail to vanish. They simply lost their reason to exist when commerce, mail, and schooling relocated to wherever the tracks ran.
The sequence the marker records — farm, postal stop, store, post office, cemetery, school, church — is the standard anatomy of nineteenth-century rural settlement in the United States. Read it closely and you can watch how ordinary Americans built civic life from scratch, with the same handful of families serving as merchants, postmasters, and school founders because there was no one else to do it.
That a schoolhouse also served as the first sanctuary for two different congregations captures something essential about the frontier: institutions were shared and improvised, and a single plain building could be the whole community's classroom and church at once. When such a place is absorbed by a metropolis, its name usually survives only on a cemetery gate — which is precisely why markers like this one matter.
If you visit
There is no town of Kit to walk through anymore; it lives on mainly in its cemetery, which sits beside Oak Grove Cemetery. That is where to go if you want to stand in the settlement's last tangible remnant. Read the family names on the older stones — Story, Smith, Cox, and others — and you are reading the founders' roll the marker points you toward.
Go quietly and go respectfully; an active and historic burial ground asks for the same courtesy you'd give any resting place. Take your time among the earliest markers, and let the dates carry you back past the freeways to the 1870s and '80s, when a store and a post office stood nearby.
It makes a thought-provoking stop on any drive through modern Irving. All around you is dense metropolitan Dallas–Fort Worth; here is proof that farm families were working this ground generations before the airport and the interchanges arrived. The contrast is the whole point — the metroplex didn't appear on empty land, it grew over places like Kit.
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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Related people
- · John W. Gorbit
- · Jestine Gorbit
- · Isaac "Ike" Story
- · Mark Callister Lively
Themes & tags
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