NEEDMORE, TEXAS (Delta County). Needmore, also known as Jernigan, Pecan, Pecan Branch, and Eureka, is a small farming community at the intersection of Farm Road 3132 and a dirt road, between Barnett Creek and the West Fork of Jernigan Creek 1½ miles southeast of Yowell in southwestern Delta County. The area was inhabited during the Republic of Texas era, and in 1850 local residents organized the Jernigan Baptist Church under the leadership of pastor Will Cummings. In 1873 a post office called Pecan (for the local trees) opened, with John W. Pratt as postmaster. By 1882 D. P. Holland had constructed a gristmill, and the population of the community was reported as 100. The post office name was changed to Needmore in 1886. By 1890 the town had Pratt's general store, a blacksmith, a large cotton gin, the office of physician J. M. Logsdon, three gristmills, and three carpenters. By 1892 Logsdon was running the post office, and a municipal government had been established. The school district had been formed as Eureka, and in 1893 the Baptist congregation, which had lost its church in a storm, began meeting in the school building.
When the Texas Midland Railroad built through Delta County in 1895, it bypassed Needmore, which led to the town's decline. The school reported thirty white students and two teachers in 1906, and the next year the post office was discontinued. By 1900 the community population had decreased to fifty. The fellowship moved out of the schoolhouse in 1918 and into a new religious hall. The 1936 county highway map identified Needmore as a church, a school, and a cluster of dwellings at the intersection of two dirt roads. In 1949 the school was absorbed into the West Delta district. Only the church and a few scattered homes remained in 1964, and by 1970 local children attended classes in the Cooper Independent School District. The community was still shown on the 1984 county highway map.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: John J. Germann and Myron Janzen, Texas Post Offices by County (1986 Paul Garland Hervey, A History of Education in Delta County, Texas (M.A. thesis, University of Texas, 1951 Wilma Ross and Billie Phillips, Photos and Tales of Delta County (1976 Fred Tarpley, 1001 Texas Place Names (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1980).
