EBONY, TEXAS. Ebony is twenty-three miles west of Goldthwaite in extreme western Mills County. The community, originally named Buffalo, was settled in the 1880s. In 1891, when residents applied for a post office, the name Buffalo was rejected. The town was then renamed Ebony, for Ebony Shaw, a local cowboy. Its post office opened on January 5, 1891, with Victoria Griffin as postmistress. Ebony grew to thirty-five residents by 1910 and to 113 by 1930, when the community had two businesses. By 1940, however, its population had declined to fifty; the post office was discontinued around 1945. By the late 1950s the community was virtually abandoned. Highway maps for the early 1980s show a cemetery and a community center at Ebony.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Flora Gatlin Bowles, A No Man's Land Becomes a County (Austin: Steck, 1958). Fred Tarpley, 1001 Texas Place Names (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1980).

Julius A. Amin