BLOCKER, TEXAS (Harrison County). Blocker was south of the Louisiana and Arkansas Railway on a site near where present Farm roads 9 and 1999 intersect, four miles west of the Louisiana state line and sixteen miles northeast of Marshall in northeastern Harrison County. The community was presumably named for William J. Blocker, who owned the land grant it was on. The town had a post office from 1884 to 1901. In 1890 Blocker had a population of twenty-five, a steam gristmill, a cotton gin, and a general store. By 1892 it had a population estimated at fifty and two churches. In 1896 Blocker had a voting box, and the following year the Blocker district school enrolled thirty-three students. In 1900 a railroad, which became part of the Missouri, Kansas and Texas the following year, was built through the area. In 1901 Blocker's post office and the general store were moved to a new community three miles to the west, named Leigh, that grew up along the railroad. Blocker did not appear on the state highway map of 1948, and in 1984 all that remained at the townsite was a cemetery.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Jerome McCown, Scraps of the Early History of Marshall and Harrison County (MS, Barker Texas History Center, University of Texas at Austin). Charles P. Zlatkovich, Texas Railroads (Austin: University of Texas Bureau of Business Research, 1981).
