ROMAYOR, TEXAS. Romayor is at the junction of Farm roads 787 and 2610, sixty-three miles northwest of Beaumont in northern Liberty County. The old community, called River before 1900 due to its location on the Trinity River, was the site of several pre-Civil War sawmills. Liberty County residents also remembered groups of Alabama and Coushatta Indians residing there during the late nineteenth century. The introduction of rice as a major agricultural crop in the late nineteenth century led to tremendous change in the area. The post office, established in 1903, was dubbed Romayor, after the Joaquin F. de Rumayor grant, upon which it was located. The community also secured a station on the Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe Railway at roughly the same time. With an estimated population of 100, Romayor became a voting precinct in 1929. In 1940 the Forward Trinity Valley Association, with its headquarters at Romayor, sponsored the foundation of the Trinity Valley Chemurgic Institute.^qv Romayor was also the site of the Trinity Valley Voice, published there in late 1939 and early 1940. The monthly publication was later moved, however, and the school closed with the outbreak of World War II.^qv Although interest in the projects, as well as in the more general improvement of the Trinity River, did not die out completely, Romayor did not achieve the growth that had once seemed possible. One business and the post office served the town's ninety-six residents in 1983. The population was ninety-six through 2000.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Miriam Partlow, Liberty, Liberty County, and the Atascosito District (Austin: Pemberton, 1974). Jake Smith Collection, Sam Houston Regional Library, Liberty, Texas.

Robert Wooster