History
Len L. Lewis, a horse trader and former Union Army officer, helped establish the community in the late 1870s or early 1880s. After marrying a local widow, Lewis purchased a half-section of land and proceeded with plans to build a town that he hoped would become a trade center for the region. Ed, Tom, and Robert Stevenson opened a store in 1881 and Lewis laid out a town site that included forty lots and a town square – he hoped that the town would eventually serve as the seat of government for a new county. When a post office was established in 1882, the site was named London.
The community continued to grow and by 1896, the population had grown to approximately 100. The number of residents reached an estimated 360 in 1930. The Great Depression caused a brief decline in London, but by 1943, the population had grown to 400. In the years after World War II, the community again suffered a decline in the number of people and businesses. The low point was reached in the early 1970s, when only around 110 people were living in the community. In the latter years of the twentieth century, the population rose to approximately 180.
The London Town Square was designated a Recorded Texas Historic Landmark in 1971, Marker number 2988.
Although London is unincorporated, it has a post office, with the ZIP code of 76854.
Read more about this topic: London, Texas
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“In front of these sinister facts, the first lesson of history is the good of evil. Good is a good doctor, but Bad is sometimes a better.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“False history gets made all day, any day,
the truth of the new is never on the news
False history gets written every day
...
the lesbian archaeologist watches herself
sifting her own life out from the shards she’s piecing,
asking the clay all questions but her own.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)
“The steps toward the emancipation of women are first intellectual, then industrial, lastly legal and political. Great strides in the first two of these stages already have been made of millions of women who do not yet perceive that it is surely carrying them towards the last.”
—Ellen Battelle Dietrick, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, ch. 13, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)