CANNONVILLE, TEXAS. Cannonville, in the hills of central Hays County, was the brainchild of an early county booster, William Cannon. In the mid-1850s Cannon chose and platted the site for a new town about sixteen miles northwest of San Marcos, east of Onion Creek, and on the road to Dripping Springs. After securing a post office in 1857, Cannon led a petition drive to move the county government from San Marcos to his land along Onion Creek, on the grounds that the former town was too far from the center of the county. Cannonville won an election held to decide the issue, but the Civil War interrupted a lawsuit brought by San Marcos to overturn the election results, and the move was never accomplished. By the end of the war, a change in the southern boundary of the county left Cannonville outside of the accepted central area; the issue was apparently dropped, and San Marcos remained the county seat. Cannonville apparently never attracted many settlers, and by 1862 both its post office and community school had been moved.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Dudley Richard Dobie, A Brief History of Hays County and San Marcos, Texas (San Marcos, 1948).
