Booth

Booth is on the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway and Farm Road 2759, eight miles southeast of Richmond in eastern Fort Bend County. The site was originally a part of the Henry Jones league in the Stephen F. Austin colony. Freeman Irby Booth founded the settlement in the 1890s, giving it his name. Booth was a major landowner in the county and operated a general store, a lumberyard, a cotton gin, and a syrup mill in the community. The town of Booth was granted a post office in 1894 and had a Baptist church, a school, and an estimated 150 inhabitants in 1896. In 1914 the community had an estimated 300 inhabitants, a bank, and telephone service. In 1926 the Booth schools served eighty-five white and 177 black students. The population of the community stayed an estimated 100 from 1925 through 1948, and in the 1940s Booth had two churches, a school, a cemetery, and a number of dwellings. Booth's population fell to forty in 1949. In 1980 the community comprised a collection of dwellings and two businesses. Its population was estimated at sixty in 1990.