CROWN, TEXAS. Crown is east of Farm Road 1334 ten miles west of Jourdanton in west central Atascosa County. It was a settlement of freed slaves and was first known as Lagunillas but was renamed Crown in 1900, when a post office was established. The name is said to have come from the crown trademark on a sewing machine. John W. Crouch was the first postmaster. In 1904 Lagunillas School in Crown had fifty-four students. By 1914 Crown had a population of twenty-five, a gin, a general store, and the Crown School (formerly Lagunillas School) with 244 students. The Crown post office closed in 1923. The population had grown to fifty in 1925 but declined to fifteen by 1933, the year that the school was consolidated with the schools in Charlotte. A boll weevil infestation wiped out the area's cotton farmers in 1937. In 1990 a few widely scattered dwellings, one business, and some oil wells on the edge of the Big Foot oilfield were at the site. In 2000 the population was ten.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Atascosa County Centennial, 1856-1956 (Jourdanton, Texas: Atascosa County Centennial Association, n.d.). Atascosa County History (Pleasanton, Texas: Atascosa History Committee, 1984). Margaret G. Clover, The Place Names of Atascosa County (M.A. thesis, University of Texas, 1952).
