TALTY, TEXAS. Talty is near Farm Road 1641 eight miles northwest of Kaufman in northwest Kaufman County. The area was originally settled by a number of Irish Catholic pioneers, among them Tom and Martin Layden, Edmund and Daniel Vaughan, and William O'Connor. The community was originally called Layden's Ridge and later known as Irish Ridge. Talty was legally established with the filing of deeds on March 27, 1874. During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries Talty had a general store, a gristmill, and a grocery and drug business. In 1891 the community's Catholic population built St. Martin's Church on a tract of land donated by Martin Layden. A school was started about the same time, and a post office opened in 1899 and closed in 1901. In 1902 the Catholic residents of Talty constructed a convent and persuaded nuns of the Sisters of Notre Dame to come to the settlement. The sisters administered a parochial school near the convent until fire destroyed both structures in 1924. Between 1900 and 1936 Talty had sixteen residents and two businesses. In 1956 the population reach sixty, and the town had three businesses; in 1966 residents numbered 150. In the late 1980s the population had fallen to thirty-two, where it remained in 1990. The population grew rapidly and by 2000 reached 1,028.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Kaufman County Historical Commission, History of Kaufman County (Dallas: Taylor, 1978).

Brian Hart