Old Glory

Old Glory is on U.S. Highway 380 between the Double Mountain Fork and the Salt Fork of the Brazos River, five miles from the Haskell county line in eastern Stonewall County. Development began with a few ranches and scattered farms in the late 1880s. By 1904 a group of German Americans had settled east of what is now the townsite of Old Glory. They laid out the site for the town of Brandenburg, but only a schoolhouse and a general store were constructed. Other families continued to move into the area northwest of Brandenburg. In 1909 the Stamford and Northwestern Railway Company was chartered to build a railroad from Stamford to Spur. The Swenson Land and Cattle Company provided a townsite on the rail line two miles west of the original Brandenburg site. The name of the new town became New Brandenburg, or simply Brandenburg, and the old community then became known as Old Brandenburg. The new town grew with the coming of the railroad, and a mercantile store, a gin, and a post office soon served the community. A one-room school was constructed. At the beginning of World War I there was strong sentiment to change the name of the town, and residents chose the name Old Glory, which became official in 1918. The community's growth continued through the 1920s, and its population reached a peak of 275 in 1929. Its population dropped to around seventy-five during the Great Depression but rose to about 250 by the early 1940s. With the consolidation of five local community schools, a building was erected at Old Glory in 1930 to serve an enrollment that peaked at 280 in 193637. The school stood at the center of activities within the community, serving as a civic center as well as an educational institution. The town's population dropped to 175 by the late 1940s, and the drought of the early 1950s forced many people out of work. In the late 1950s and early 1960s Old Glory enjoyed a small boom, perhaps as a result of the development at that time of oil resources in Stonewall County. The town's population was reported as 250 by 1965. By 1973, however, the town's population was estimated at only 125. Though the Texas Almanac reported Old Glory's 1990 population was still 125, a 1989 newspaper report put its population at about sixty. At that time the community still had its post office, as well as a church and a combination gas station and grocery store.