IRELAND, TEXAS. Ireland is on Farm Road 932 sixteen miles northwest of Gatesville in northwestern Coryell County. It was first known as Hamco because of its location on the Hamilton-Coryell county line, but in 1911, with the completion of the Stephenville North and South Texas Railway, residents applied for a post office in the name of Ireland, in honor of Governor John Ireland. The Ireland community reached its peak in the 1920s, when it had three general stores, three churches, a bank, several other businesses, and a population of 400. When the railroad was abandoned in the early 1940s, the community declined rapidly; by the late 1940s it had only forty residents. By 1970 the post office at Ireland had become a rural branch of the Gatesville postal service. The community reported a population of sixty in 1990. The population remained unchanged in 2000.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Coryell County Genealogical Society, Coryell County, Texas, Families, 1854–1985 (Dallas: Taylor, 1986). Zelma Scott, History of Coryell County (Austin: Texas State Historical Association, 1965).
