FLO, TEXAS. Flo, also known as Kidd's Mill, Wheelock, Bethlehem, Oneta, New Hope, Oden(s), and Midway, is on Farm roads 1151 and 831 and Wheelock Creek twelve miles northeast of Centerville in central Leon County. There Thaddeus O. Kidd built a combined grist and saw mill and received a post office named Kidd's Mill in 1855; this post office closed in 1868. In 1880 a post office operated briefly as Odens. Another one operated as Oden from 1885 until 1891, when it was given its final name of Flo, after the postmaster's dog. The post office closed sometime after 1930.
The first school in Kidd's Mill was opened before the Civil War. In 1927 a consolidated school was established at Flo. In 1940 a rock-walled school building, called "Flo's Folly" by some, was named Lone Star School and served students all the way from the Midway-Russel area, until it burned and was replaced by a brick building. The remnants of the rock school could still be seen in 1990. As of 1986 the children of Flo were being bussed to Oakwood.
In 1896 the Flo area had a gin and mill, two general stores, a breeder, and one physician. In 1914 the population was sixty, and the town had a gristmill. The community had forty-six residents in 1968–69 and twenty in the mid-1970s. A 1989 map indicates one church and one business. The population in 2000 was still twenty.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Leon County Historical Book Survey Committee, History of Leon County (Dallas: Curtis Media, 1986).
