TENNYSON, TEXAS. Tennyson is on U.S. Highway 277 at its junction with Farm Road 2333, near Mount Margaret in southeastern Coke County. The town was named for the British poet Alfred Lord Tennyson by Samuel Sayner, an Englishman who settled there in 1882. In 1894 Tennyson acquired a post office that assumed the duties of the Mule Creek (later Juniper) post office. The first school in Tennyson was named County Line until 1912, when it was named Tennyson School. The population was only twenty in 1910, when the Kansas City, Mexico and Orient Railway began operating. For several years thereafter Tennyson exhibited some growth and had several businesses and stores, but growth stopped as cotton farming began to decline in the 1920s. The population of Tennyson was fifty in 1940 and had declined by 1980 to thirty-five, although the post office was still in operation. Through 2000 the population was still recorded at thirty-five.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Jewell G. Pritchett, From the Top of Old Hayrick: A Narrative History of Coke County (Abilene, Texas: Pritchett, 1980). Kathleen E. and Clifton R. St. Clair, eds., Little Towns of Texas (Jacksonville, Texas: Jayroe Graphic Arts, 1982). Fred Tarpley, 1001 Texas Place Names (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1980).