HAMSHIRE, TEXAS. Hamshire is on State Highway 124 twenty miles southwest of Beaumont in western Jefferson County. It was probably named for Lovan Hamshire, an area land developer active as early as the 1870s. Hamshire was on the Gulf and Interstate Railway and secured a post office in 1897. A townsite plat was filed in 1911 by Theodore F. Koch.^qv Another of the area's major land dealers, Herbert Roedenbeck, subdivided additional land south of the railroad later that year, calling the new subdivision Hamshire Gardens. Despite the interest shown by local rice farmers, Hamshire had only fifty inhabitants in 1928. Oil discoveries at the Fannett (1927) and Stowell (1941) fields, however, sparked new development in western Jefferson County. By 1940 the population in Hamshire had grown to 200. Natural gas production at the Hamshire field also continued to be of major importance to the community's economy through the 1980s. By 1985 the community had an estimated 350 residents and twenty-two businesses. In 1990 and 2000 the population remained an estimated 350.

Robert Wooster