ROYSTON, TEXAS. Royston, at the junction of Farm roads 1224 and 2142, ten miles northeast of Roby in northeastern Fisher County, was established in 1907 and named for "Aunt" Katie Royston, the owner of the site. As a shipping point on the Texas Central Railroad, the town swiftly acquired a school, a hotel, a hardware store, a drugstore, grocers, a lumberyard, a bank, and other businesses. A sharp decline occurred after 1909, when the population had reached 500. Local cotton farming declined, and prosperity did not return. By 1940 Royston had only three businesses, a post office, and seventy-five people, with only four residences on the original townsite. Later the post office was closed, and more people moved away. The population was thirty in 1980 and 1990.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Lora Blount, A Short History of Fisher County (M.A. thesis, Hardin-Simmons University, 1947). E. L. Yeats and E. H. Shelton, History of Fisher County, (n.p.: Feather, 1971).

William R. Hunt