The History of Eustace, Texas

The Eustace townsite was surveyed in the fall of 1898 by a surveyor named Meredith, on the Lee Moseley farm, at a time when a railroad was being built through the area between Eustace and Mabank. The real catalyst came in 1900, when the Texas and New Orleans Railroad extended its line eastward from Kemp to Athens.

As so often happened in frontier Texas, the railroad drew the community to it: businessmen from nearby settlements packed up and moved to be closer to the new line, and a town quickly took shape along the tracks. The promise of reliable shipping and trade made the new rail town the place to be in that corner of Henderson County.

The young town went through a remarkable series of names. It was first called Moseley, after W. L. Moseley, who had sold the railroad right-of-way across the Beltram survey and sold the first lots in the new town. It was also known as Jolo, in honor of Joe L. Pickle, the town blacksmith, and a Jolo post office was established in 1900.

But that same year the name changed again — this time for good. The town and its post office were renamed Eustace, after Capt. W. T. Eustace, a popular Confederate Civil War veteran. The town's first business, the Moore and Russell grocery, opened that fall, and J. W. Moore secured the post office in the spring of 1900, serving as the first postmaster for eight years.

Establishing a school proved a challenge for the new community — J. W. Moore and others met with considerable difficulty getting a school district located in Eustace — but they succeeded by the fall of 1900, and school was held that winter. By 1907 a school was firmly operational, becoming a foundational part of the community, as the Eustace schools remain today.

Through the 20th century Eustace settled into life as a small farming and railroad town. The building of Cedar Creek Lake to the north in the 1960s added a recreational dimension to the area, and today Eustace is a quiet community between the lake and Athens, anchored by its schools and its location in the lake-and-woods country of Henderson County.