Hamby

Hamby, on State Highway 351 five miles east of Abilene in northeastern Taylor County, touches the corners of Taylor, Jones, Callahan, and Shackelford counties. The cotton and oil community was first named Corners, for the county corners its boundaries touched. Hamby Richardson, a bachelor from Georgia, owned the earliest store there shortly before 1900; he was the first postmaster when the community's post office opened in 1902. After the name Corners was rejected by postal authorities, friends urged Richardson to send in his first name since the place was already popularly called Hamby's. After the Hamby post office opened, a small settlement with several businesses sprang up there. Though the post office closed in 1919, many of these businesses continued until the mid-1930s, when the community's population was estimated at twenty. School education began for Hamby students in 1903, in a schoolhouse called Melrose, two miles south of the community. The Baptist church was organized at Hamby in 1906, the Methodist church in 1907, and the Church of Christ in 1914. In 1907 the school was moved to the west of Hamby, and an upper floor was added. Classes were held on the first floor, and the second was a meeting place for the local Woodmen of the World lodge. In 1915 a new school building was built; it still stood in the mid-1980s, when first through sixth grade classes were still being taught in Hamby. The eleventh grade was transferred to Abilene in 1936. The population of Hamby was estimated at 100 from 1949 through 2000.