UNITIA, TEXAS. Unitia was just west of Farm Road 1742, a mile northeast of Enloe, and 1½ miles southwest of Mount Joy in north central Delta County. The area had been settled by 1878, when the Unitia School opened. Early teachers included S. C. Unsell, M. W. Smith, and W. H. Maupin. The community developed after 1884, when the Texas Midland Railroad began a line through the area. In 1884 a post office opened there, with Lessonberry B. Enloe as postmaster; it was named by John Costen for his former Tennessee home. At that time the only business in the community was a country store. By 1888 Costen, the local pharmacist, had become the postmaster, and Unitia included 275 citizens, who were served by three plant nurseries, two cotton gins, two general stores, two doctors, a corn mill, a blacksmith, a woodworker, and the Mills and Smith Cattle Company. Within two years, however, the nurseries and the cattle company had closed, and the population had decreased to 250. In 1897 the school enrolled seventy-nine pupils and employed one teacher. At that time many local residents shopped in nearby Enloe, a larger community, and gradually they moved there. The Unitia post office was discontinued in 1903. In 1904 Methodist residents filed a deed for the Unitia Methodist Protestant Church, and the next year the school reported fifty-two white students. Bessie Viles taught the last classes at Unitia School in 1913, the year it was merged with the Enloe district. Unitia was not shown on the 1936 county highway map. A few scattered homes remained at the site in 1964.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: John J. Germann and Myron Janzen, Texas Post Offices by County (1986). Paul Garland Hervey, A History of Education in Delta County, Texas (M.A. thesis, University of Texas, 1951). Wilma Ross and Billie Phillips, Photos and Tales of Delta County (1976).

Vista K. McCroskey