TELICO, TEXAS. Telico is on Farm Road 1181 five miles east of Ennis in east central Ellis County. The site that became Telico was settled before 1856 and, as it lay near the banks of the Trinity River, was originally called Trinity City. By the mid-1850s the community had been renamed Telico, after Telico, North Carolina, a plantation and manufacturing center. In an effort to emulate the North Carolina town further and to encourage local growth, Thomas A. McCray established the Telico Manufacturing Company in 1854. McCray and other investors spent over $100,000 on the plant, which covered a 100-by-200-foot area and used four large engines to produce cotton and wool cloth. By 1856 the community had several business establishments and a hotel. The Civil War, however, ended both the company's and the community's existence. Sometime before 1894 a new Telico community was established west of the original settlement. In 1894 the new community received a post office which remained in operation until 1905. Throughout the 1930s and 1940s, when the first population statistics were available, Telico had a population of forty-eight; it had three businesses in 1933 and two in 1945. During the 1950s and 1960s the community's population reached eighty. Four business establishments operated in Telico in 1952. From 1977 through 2000 Telico reported a population of ninety-five.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Edna Davis Hawkins, et al., History of Ellis County, Texas (Waco: Texian, 1972). Memorial and Biographical History of Ellis County (Chicago: Lewis, 1892; rpt., as Ellis County History, Fort Worth: Historical Publishers, 1972).
