FARMER, TEXAS (Crosby County). Farmer is on Farm Road 193 thirty-two miles northeast of Lubbock in northwestern Crosby County, in the center of a cotton-growing region. Acting on a petition by S. D. Thornton, in 1893 the Crosby county court established Sonora School District Number Eight in the area. The name Sonora was not legally changed to Farmer until 1913, but the district was always referred to as Farmer, after a pioneer, W. W. Farmer. In 1893 the community built its first schoolhouse, a one-room building financed by donations. By 1951 three other school buildings had been constructed, and the Farmer school district had grown to an area of twenty-seven square miles. The school built in 1951 was razed in 1974-75, after the Farmer district was consolidated with the Lorenzo Independent School District. In 1925 J. A. Zeh constructed a country store, which was in operation until 1965; a gin built by the Murray Company in 1929 remained in operation through the 1975 ginning season. Farmer had seventy-five residents in 1940, recorded a population of forty-nine in 1980, and did not appear on the 1990 census list.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Crosby County Pioneer Memorial Museum, A History of Crosby County, 1876-1977 (Dallas: Taylor, 1978).
