BARNES, TEXAS. Barnes is at the junction of Farm roads 942 and 1745, about seventy-five miles northwest of Beaumont in east central Polk County. The first recorded settler in the area was Dan Hamilton, who arrived during the 1850s. The community derived its name from an early black family of the region. General stores operated by John S. Havis and John A. Handley served residents of this largely rural settlement during the nineteenth century. A few scattered dwellings remained in the late 1980s. Barnes was listed as a community in 1990, but without census figures. In 2000 the population was seventy-five.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: A Pictorial History of Polk County, Texas, 1846-1910 (Livingston, Texas: Polk County Bicentennial Commission, 1976; rev. ed. 1978).

Robert Wooster