Perry

PERRY, TEXAS (Falls County). Perry is on State Highway 6 eight miles north of Marlin in northern Falls County. Settlement of the area began as early as 1852, but no townsite was laid out until 1872, when the Waco and Northwestern division of the Houston and Texas Central Railroad built a section of track from Bremond to Ross. The new town was granted a post office called Peyton in 1876; it was renamed Perry in 1883 in honor of Albert G. Perry , county judge, who had settled in the area in the 1850s. In the mid-1880s Perry had four steam gristmills and cotton gins, two general stores, a hotel, and 250 residents; the principal shipments made by local farmers were cotton, cottonseed, grain, and wool. By 1900 the estimated population had risen to 350. In 1905 the Perry school district had a one-teacher school for fifty-nine white students and two one-teacher schools for eighty-three black students. The total population of Perry rose as high as 400 in the 1920s and 1930s but fell to 300 in the 1940s. County highway maps in the late 1940s showed a school, a church, and several businesses and scattered houses. The Perry schools were consolidated with the Marlin Independent School District in 1965. The number of residents continued to decline throughout the 1960s; a population of ninety-six was reported from the 1970s to 1990. The population dropped to seventy-six by 2000.