Kenney

Kenney is at the junction of Farm Road 2754 and State Highway 36, on the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway eight miles north of Bellville in far northern Austin County. Settlement in the vicinity began in the late 1820s, and several waves of German immigration reached the area between the 1830s and 1900. The town was founded in 1880 as a station on a new line of the Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe Railway between Bellville and Brenham. When a post office was established in 1880, the town was named Thompson, after J. E. Thompson, an early resident who served as the first postmaster. The name was changed first to Kenneyville in 1884, then to Kenney in 1892, in honor of pioneer evangelist John Wesley Kenney