CHATT, TEXAS. Chatt is off Interstate Highway 35 some four miles south of Hillsboro in central Hill County. It apparently was established about 1884, when it was named Jessie for Jessie McClure, a pioneer settler who built and operated a general merchandise store there. A two-story school was built on land donated by W. A. Ficklin in 1896. By the 1905–06 academic year the school had sixty-eight students and two teachers. A post office operated in the community from 1896 to 1910. The town apparently adopted the new name Chatt sometime after the tracks of the Missouri, Kansas and Texas Railroad arrived, because the line already passed through another Texas town called Jessie. Chatt was identified on the 1984 county highway map, but only a cemetery was shown at the site.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Hill County Historical Commission, A History of Hill County, Texas, 1853–1980 (Waco: Texian, 1980).
