Brownsboro

Brownsboro is at the intersection of Farm roads 607 and 314 and State Highway 31, seventeen miles northeast of Athens in northeast Henderson County. It was settled in 1849 by John (Red) Brown qv , who operated a toll bridge across Kickapoo Creek on the road to Jordan's Saline and Tyler. Several Norwegians immigrated to the area between 1849 and 1857. By 1860 Henry Cade had erected a sawmill and a cotton gin. With the construction of the St. Louis Southwestern Railway through the county in 1880, the town moved to the railroad. In 1885 Brownsboro had six general stores and a population of 100. It had four churches, a hotel, a grocer, a saloon, and a blacksmith in 1892, when a post office was opened. The population was 500 in 1914. State highway maps of 1936 showed two schools, a church, several buildings, and scattered dwellings at the townsite. In 1989 the population was 710. In 1990 it was 545. The population grew to 796 in 2000.