TANKERSLEY, TEXAS. Tankersley (Tankersly), also known as MacGrath, is on U.S. Highway 67, Farm Road 2335, and the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe line in west central Tom Green County. It was named for Richard Franklin Tankersley, husband of Annie Ellen Allen Tankersley,^qv one of the first white settlers on the Concho River in 1864 and donor of land for the townsite. A post office, established in 1910 as Tankersly, was discontinued in 1963. In 1914 the community had a population of forty, a general store, and two grocers. The local school had eighty-three pupils and three teachers in 1933. The 1936 county highway map showed the school, a church, a post office, a business, and scattered dwellings at the townsite. The population reached a high of seventy-five in 1946, when Tankersley had three businesses, but by 1953 the community had twenty residents and one business. In the 1980s a cemetery, the Tankersly–Twin Mountain school, the abandoned railroad station, and the West Texas Boys Ranch remained in the area. The estimated population of the community was twenty in 1990. No population estimates were available in 2000.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Clarence George Parsons, Proposed Plan for the Reorganization of the Schools in Tom Green County, Texas (M.A. thesis, University of Texas, 1939).

Diana J. Kleiner