MENLOW, TEXAS. Menlow is on Farm Road 1304 four miles west of Interstate Highway 35 and ten miles southwest of Hillsboro in southwestern Hill County. The community was named after a park in the Carolinas by some of its settlers who had passed through there. The town was settled during the 1890s by families from the Carolinas, Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, Tennessee, Kentucky, and Arkansas, as well as from Europe. Menlow had a post office from 1895 to 1903. In 1896 the town had a population of fifty, a physician, a general store, and a blacksmith. During the early 1900s the community reached its peak, with a population of 100, three churches, two grocery stores, a school, a gin, a blacksmith, a barbershop, a veterinarian, and a physician. By then, cotton was the chief crop, and farmers in the surrounding area, such as those from nearby Chapel Hill, took their bales to the local gin, which was built around 1900. Joe Steele, an early settler, donated land for a school and a Methodist church. Treadwell School was organized in Menlow in 1920 and was consolidated with Abbott School in 1940. During the 1930s and 1940s Menlow had a population of twenty-five, a country store, and a school. Some families moved away at the beginning of World War II, seeking employment in defense plants. By the 1970s the town reported a population of ten. This same figure was still reported through 2000.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Ellis Bailey, A History of Hill County, Texas, 1838–1965 (Waco: Texian Press, 1966).
