KIRBY, TEXAS (Hill County). Kirby (Kerby) was an agricultural community five miles southwest of Hillsboro and four miles west of the Texas Electric Railway in central Hill County. Henry Ross, who become a citizen of Texas during the 1840s, was granted the land that became the Kirby community. Robert Moore Duff traveled from Texarkana or Tehuacana, Texas, to Kirby in 1881. His 500-acre spread reached across the entire southern part of the Henry Ross survey to the Texas Electric railway line on the east. The Duff crossing on the railway was named for this family. Jesse M. Beavers and his family traveled west from Mississippi and settled north of the intersection on Patton Mill Road in 1882. The Beavers operated a grocery store and post office, but the store burned in 1920. The post office functioned from 1899 to 1903. West of the store was a blacksmith shop and a cotton gin operated by Sam McDonald. The community was never incorporated, and no population figures were ever reported. The school served local students from 1906 to 1938, when it was consolidated with schools in Hillsboro and Abbott.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Hill County Historical Commission, A History of Hill County, Texas, 1853–1980 (Waco: Texian, 1980).
