KINGSBURY, TEXAS. Kingsbury is on U.S. Highway 90 ten miles northeast of Seguin in northeastern Guadalupe County. Sam Neel, an agent for English settlers, built a home near the site in the early 1870s. The Galveston, Harrisburg and San Antonio Railway came through in 1875 and a post office was opened that year with Mark W. Isard as postmaster. The townsite was laid out in 1876 and named for railroad official William Kingsbury. By the mid-1880s the settlement had a steam gristmill, a cotton gin, a general store, a church, a district school, and a population of 130. In 1904 the population had risen to 346, and the town had two one-teacher schools for fifty-nine black students and two schools and three teachers for 123 white students. Kingsbury became part of the Seguin Independent School District in 1962. Cotton was the leading product of the area during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; oil became important when the Gander Slu and Darst Creek oilfields came in during the 1920s. The estimated population reached 450 in 1968. Kingsbury had 200 residents and six businesses in 1990. Its economy was still largely based on oil and agriculture. By 2000 the populationreached 652 with twenty-nine businesses.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Seguin Gazette, November 13, 1963. Willie Mae Weinert, An Authentic History of Guadalupe County (Seguin, Texas: Seguin Enterprise, 1951; rpt. 1976).
