NOBILITY, TEXAS. Nobility is on State Highway 78 sixteen miles southwest of Bonham in extreme southwestern Fannin County. The area was settled about 1858 and was originally called Gentry, after early settler William Gentry. When the community secured a post office in 1881, another Gentry community already existed in Texas, so the name Nobility was selected as synonymous. By the early 1890s Nobility had a population of seventy-five, with four businesses, including a cotton gin and a gristmill. It also had a school and two churches. From 1936 through the mid-1960s it gave an estimated population of eighty-three; it reported four businesses in 1936 but none by 1966. From the late 1970s to 2000 the population of Nobility was estimated as twenty-one.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Fannin County Folks and Facts (Dallas: Taylor, 1977).

Brian Hart