PROFFITT, TEXAS. Proffitt is on a local road nine miles west of Newcastle in west central Young County, four miles east of the Throckmorton county line. The town was named for the Proffitt family, who took up ranching along the Brazos River and Elm Creek northwest of Fort Belknap in 1862. After the Civil War John Proffitt donated land for a church that served further as a school and Masonic lodge. A post office was established in January 1880 with J. G. Armstrong as postmaster. Proffitt started a freighting business and built a store in the community in 1894. The settlement grew to include Methodist and Baptist churches. Although the post office was discontinued and moved to Newcastle in 1925, the town had one business and a population of fifty through the 1930s and 1940s. Texas Almanac reports of the mid-1960s indicated a population of 125, although the town was not mentioned in later records. County maps of the 1980s indicated a rural settlement near Elm Creek and the presence of a church, community center, and cemetery.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: T. Lindsay Baker, Ghost Towns of Texas (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1986). Carrie J. Crouch, Young County: History and Biography (Dallas: Dealey and Love, 1937; rev. ed., A History of Young County, Texas, Austin: Texas State Historical Association, 1956).
