MAHONEY, TEXAS. Mahoney, on Farm roads 1537 and 69 seven miles northeast of Sulphur Springs in northeastern Hopkins County, was founded in 1900 when George W. Mahoney purchased the former Kimberly Ranch, divided the land, and sold parcels to settlers. Mahoney donated land for a school, a cemetery, and Baptist and Methodist churches. He placed advertisements in newspapers across the state. In 1901 W. D. Davis was granted a post office under the name White Oak. A school with the same name began operating after 1900 and in 1905 had an enrollment of fifty. The post office was closed in 1904, but the town continued to prosper, and at its height prior to World War I it had a sawmill, two cotton gins, a barber shop, a doctor's office, a syrup mill, and a blacksmith. By the mid-1930s the village was known as Mahoney and had a school, two churches, one business, a number of scattered houses, and a reported population of fifteen. The school and one of the churches were later closed, but in the mid-1960s the town still had a church, a cemetery, and a number of farmhouses. In the late 1980s Mahoney was a dispersed rural community.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Sylvia M. Kibart and Rita M. Adams, eds., Pioneers of Hopkins County, Texas, Vol. 1 (Wolfe City, Texas: Henington, 1986).
