TAYLORSVILLE, TEXAS. Taylorsville, on Farm Road 86 four miles northeast of McMahan in eastern Caldwell County, was named for a local landowner. It had a school from the mid-1870s until 1884, when a larger school was built at nearby Elm Grove. A post office was established at Taylorsville in 1890, when the office in Elm Grove was closed. In 1892 Taylorsville had three churches, two steam cotton gins, two general stores, and 150 residents. Its post office was discontinued in 1907. By the 1930s the population of Taylorsville had fallen to twenty-five. Because of the population decline, the school at Elm Grove closed, and local children were sent to school at Dale, McMahan, or Lockhart. In the late 1940s the number of residents increased to forty, but it was not enough to maintain local businesses; the Taylorsville store closed in 1953. A church and several houses still marked the townsite on maps of the area in the 1980s. In 2000 the population was twenty.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Mark Withers Trail Drive Museum, Historical Caldwell County (Dallas: Taylor, 1984).

Vivian Elizabeth Smyrl