IBERIS, TEXAS. Iberis was at the intersection of two country roads a mile west of U.S. Highway 83 and seven miles south of Abilene in eastern Taylor County. The site was first settled by the Kincaid family about 1889, and a school called Kincaid or Fairview was opened there in 1901. The Iberis post office was opened that same year. Church services were also held in the school. In 1902 Kincaid School served twenty-seven pupils and two teachers, and later that year it was consolidated with several other schools to form the new Iberis School. A Presbyterian church was built about the same time, and a Baptist church was built in 1904. In 1906 the Abilene Southern Railway built through the community. In the teens the community had a gin, a blacksmith shop, a service station, and a two-story building that housed the post office, a general store, and a Woodman hall. The post office closed in 1912, the Presbyterian church was closed by 1910, and the Baptist church was closed by the 1930s. The school was consolidated with the Wylie school in 1933. A tornado that year destroyed the Baptist church and several homes. By 1940 all that remained at the site was a cemetery and a number of scattered dwellings, and all that remained by 1984 was the cemetery.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Juanita Daniel Zachry, A History of Rural Taylor County (Burnet, Texas: Nortex, 1980).

Mark Odintz