Calvert

Calvert is at the intersection of State Highway 6 and Farm roads 1644 and 979, on the Southern Pacific line nine miles north of Hearne in west central Robertson County. The earliest white settler in the area was Joseph Harlan, whose 1837 land grant lay five miles south of what is now the site of Calvert. In 1850 Robert Calvert, for whom the town was named, established a plantation west of the townsite. Calvert and other area farmers urged the Houston and Texas Central Railway to build through the area; the railroad arrived in 1868. A group of investors purchased land at the townsite and platted the community in January of that year, and by February merchants from nearby communities such as Sterling and Owensville were moving to the new town. A post office also opened at the community in 1868. The first trains arrived there in 1869. Calvert incorporated with an aldermanic form of government in 1870. In 1870, as part of the Reconstruction political maneuvering in Robertson County, Calvert replaced Owensville as county seat. Early that year the town was briefly occupied by federal troops; that year also the first school was founded in the community. The Republican party in the county drew much of its strength from black voters on the plantations in the Calvert area, and for a number of years the party was able to elect blacks from Calvert to county and state office. As a rail center and as county seat, Calvert prospered, and in 1871 the town claimed to have the largest cotton gin in the world. In 1873 a severe yellow fever epidemic killed many in the community. A county jail built in 1875 was still a local landmark more than a century later.