RELIANCE, TEXAS. Reliance is on Farm Road 1179 three miles east of U.S. Highway 190 and nine miles north of Bryan in northeastern Brazos County. The community was originally called Little Georgia, after the home of its first settlers, who arrived in the area in the 1850s. The name was changed by David Lloyd of Mississippi when he founded the Reliance Baptist Church in 1873. That same year a general store was established by W. H. (Uncle Billy) Morgan. From 1899 to around 1907 a post office operated from Morgan's general store. In 1905-06 the Reliance school had two teachers and ninety-one students. The teachers also taught at nearby Independence. Reliance also at one time had a cotton gin and a gristmill. Reliance Cemetery is located on Farm Road 1179, and its oldest headstone dates back to 1881. Reliance last was listed in the Texas Almanac in 1910, when the community reported a population of ten and one business. The 1948 county highway map showed a school, a church, a cemetery, and widely scattered dwellings at the site. The 1986 highway map indicated only a church and cemetery there.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Glenna Fourman Brundidge, Brazos County History: Rich Past-Bright Future (Bryan, Texas: Family History Foundation, 1986).
