AS TIME GOES BY
Wood County History
By LOU MALLORY - Chairperson, Wood County Historical Commission
Stout, Texas, is on FM 312 six miles south of Winnsboro and ten miles northeast of Quitman in northeast Wood County.
Both the community and a nearly creek were named after Captain Henry Stout who, around 1848, was one of Wood County's earliest settlers. He was also the owner of one of the county's oldest mills. He was also a member of a commission that organized Wood County in 1850 and the first county sheriff. It is not known if Stout actually lived in the community that bore his name.
The town, which grew up near his farmstead, took shape as early as 1877. Sometime after that date, the community had a syrup mill and a brick kiln. In 1884 it received a post office. From 1890 to 1892 the population of Stout doubled from twenty-five people to fifty. However, by 1896, it had fallen to about forty.
The community had Methodist and Baptist churches and at least eleven businesses including a wagon maker, two bee keepers, four physicians and a corn mill, a grist mill plus a flour mill.
By 1900, Stout had a school and a population reported at 212. By 1904, the post office closed and the population had fallen to 121, where it remained until the early 1940s. In the mid-1930s, Stout had a number of dwellings, two businesses, a church and a school. In 1932, the Stout school district had 115 students in ten grades taught by four teachers. By 1943, the population had dropped to 50, a level reported through the late 1960s, though maps from that time show only a few scattered dwellings remaining at the site.
Then the population rose to 76 by 1968 and from 1974 to 1990, it was reported at 86. A local legend has it that a "nine-mule load of gold," stolen by a group of Americans from a Mexican army payroll, is buried near Stout.
A historical marker and roadside park dedicated to Captain Stout are located three miles south of Stout on FM 288 at the Stout family cemetery on the old Stout farm site.
Stout Creek rises just south of FM 852 and two miles southeast of Winnsboro in northeastern Wood County. The stream is intermittent in its upper reaches. It runs southwest for nine and one-half miles to its mouth on Big Sandy Creek, eight miles east of Quitman. It crosses gently rolling to flat terrain surfaced by clay and sandy loam that supports mixed hardwoods and pines. In the 1850s, Captain Stout used the creek to power one of the first mills in the county.
| < Prev | Next > |
|---|
