History
The area's first settlers were German families during the late 1840s. The community's name is either an alteration of a Mr. Othneil – the area's first gristmill owner, or a supposed translation of the name Habermill (Haber being a German dialect word for Hafer, "oats"). A post office was established in 1853 under the name Oatmeal. The first schoolhouse opened in 1858, only to be replaced by a second building eleven years later. A gin built in the 1870s continued to serve as a local landmark into the early 1900s. A cemetery was deeded in 1871, although burials were recorded in the area as early as 1854.
In 1936, Oatmeal had a school, two churches, and scattered dwellings. By 1990, the population was around twenty – consisting mostly of families engaged in farming and ranching. That figure remained the same in 2000.
Read more about this topic: Oatmeal, Texas
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“All history becomes subjective; in other words there is properly no history, only biography.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The History of the world is not the theatre of happiness. Periods of happiness are blank pages in it, for they are periods of harmony—periods when the antithesis is in abeyance.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)
“The history of our era is the nauseating and repulsive history of the crucifixion of the procreative body for the glorification of the spirit.”
—D.H. (David Herbert)