KNIGHT, TEXAS. Knight is north of Farm Road 943 fifty-eight miles northwest of Beaumont in south central Polk County. The farming community grew up near the older settlement of Menard's Chapel and was named after a local storekeeper, Charlie Knight, who served as the first postmaster in 1889. Surrounded by dense forests, the area was penetrated by a tram railroad from Camden, presumably built to allow lumbermen access to the woodlands resources of south central Polk County. Another post office, called Mack, was opened near Knight in 1905. The Mack post office, however, closed two years later. Knight's population was estimated to be fifty in 1925, and most residents had left the area by the early 1950s. The site of the community is just south of the Big Sandy Creek and Menard Creek corridors of the Big Thicket National Preserve.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: A Pictorial History of Polk County, Texas, 1846–1910 (Livingston, Texas: Polk County Bicentennial Commission, 1976; rev. ed. 1978). Fred I. Massengill, Texas Towns: Origin of Name and Location of Each of the 2,148 Post Offices in Texas (Terrell, Texas, 1936).
