Boling

Boling is on Farm roads 1301 and 442 and the west bank of Caney Creek, nine miles southeast of Wharton in southeastern Wharton County. The community was established in 1900, when the New York, Texas and Mexican Railway built through the area. Robert E. Vineyard had a town plat surveyed and named it Bolling in honor of his six-year-old daughter, Mary Bolling Vineyard. The post office listing altered the spelling. Before the arrival of the railroad, the site was known as Floyd's Lane and was on the trail that led to crossings on the San Bernard and Colorado rivers. Until after the railroad was built, no major road, only a trail along Caney Creek, led to Wharton from the site. The railroad brought in a few settlers, but the area remained largely in the hands of large landowners, remnants from the plantation era. In 1907 Boling had a school for black students, with four teachers and an enrollment of 104. These children were primarily the descendants of former slaves whose families still lived in the area, working as tenant, sharecropper, or salaried agricultural workers on the large land tracts. In 1907 the community had a store, a blacksmith shop, and fewer than a dozen families.