OXFORD, TEXAS. Oxford is on State Highway 16 fifteen miles south of Llano in south central Llano County. The area was first settled in the mid-1850s and was home to the Bedford Academy, which received students from throughout the county. A. J. Johnson arrived in 1880 and named the settlement for his hometown of Oxford, Mississippi. Johnson had ambitious plans to develop the town and secured the services of Knight Stith to survey a townsite. A post office was established there in 1880 with George M. Wilson as postmaster. After an incident in which some intoxicated young men at a local dance threw a cat into a large pot of coffee, Oxford was sometimes referred to as Cat Town. Though it was at one time a local trade center for the cotton and cattle industries, Oxford declined in the early 1900s and lost its post office by 1924. In 1968 its population was reported as thirty-three, and it continued to be reported at that level well into the 1980s. By the early 1990s no population figures were available for the town.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Tillie Badu Moss Fry, A History of Llano County (M.A. thesis, University of Texas, 1943). Wilburn Oatman, Llano, Gem of the Hill Country: A History of Llano County (Hereford, Texas: Pioneer, 1970).
