HOWTH, TEXAS. Howth (Howth Station) is on Farm Road 1736 five miles north of Hempstead in Waller County. It began as a flag station on the Houston and Texas Central Railway in the early 1870s. The station was probably named for William Edward Howth, who provided the land for the town. The post office, which opened in 1872, shortened the name to Howth in 1877. As many as 200 families lived in the area by 1872, but the community's reported population never officially exceeded the seventy residents reported in 1884. The community had a school by 1892. Between 1896 and 1914 Howth had two flour mills and cotton gins, a general store, a physician, and a Wells Fargo express office. Though seventy residents probably lived in Howth in 1914, that number declined to forty by 1925. The Howth post office closed in 1934, and the community's last cotton gin ceased operations sometime during the 1930s. By 1949 the town's population had decreased to twenty. It was fifty in 1974 and sixty-five in 2000.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Mildred W. Abshier, et al., Former Post Offices of Waller County (Hempstead, Texas: Waller County Historical Society, 1977). Waller County Historical Commission, Cotton Gins of Waller County (Brenham, Texas, 1981). Waller County Historical Survey Committee, A History of Waller County, Texas (Waco: Texian, 1973).
