The History of Cumby, Texas

Cumby was settled in 1842 by D. W. 'Wash' Cole, who gave the spot its first name — Black Jack Grove — for a stand of blackjack oak trees just west of today's business district. That grove was more than a landmark. During the days of the Republic of Texas it served as a camp for Texas Rangers, and freight wagoners hauling goods along the Jefferson road to the interior used it as a campground too.

The Black Jack Grove post office opened in 1848 in the home of its first postmaster, John D. Matthews. A few years later Cole bought the grove and surrounding land — some 307 acres — ran a store, sold town lots, and donated ground for a Masonic lodge chartered in 1852. The settlement was taking shape on the rolling prairie and post-oak country of western Hopkins County.

By 1860 Black Jack Grove was a thriving settlement with physicians, tradesmen, and blacksmiths serving the surrounding farms. But it had also earned a rough reputation. The town was known as a place where some of the hardest characters in the county gathered, and violent fights were common — the kind of frontier notoriety that followed a community for decades.

That reputation eventually became a problem the town wanted to leave behind. As the railroad arrived and the community looked to grow into something more respectable, the old name of Black Jack Grove felt like a reminder of harder, wilder days.

In 1886 the railroad and the post office, hoping to shed the town's rough image, suggested a new name. Congressman David B. Culberson proposed honoring his friend Robert H. Cumby, a Confederate veteran, and the name stuck. Black Jack Grove became Cumby.

The renamed town kept growing. The Independent Normal College opened in Cumby in 1895 and trained students until it closed in 1905, and the community reached a peak population of around 925 in 1929. Today Cumby is a small, quiet town of roughly 700, anchored by its schools and its place along I-30 in the heart of Northeast Texas's dairy and ranch country.