WARLOCK, TEXAS. Warlock, formerly known as Ero, is on Farm Road 729 eighteen miles northwest of Jefferson in northwestern Marion County. Ero was built as a railway station on the Port Bolivar Iron Ore Railroad in 1912. The railroad was projected to run from Longview to a point seventy miles to the north, but the company ran out of funds and never built beyond Ero, a distance of some thirty miles from Longview. The railroad was abandoned in 1927. In the 1930s Ero had two businesses, two churches, and two school buildings with a total of six classrooms known collectively as Warlock School. In 1937 the Warlock schools were attended by a daily average of fifty-two black elementary students taught by two teachers and fifty-six black high school students taught by one teacher. The schools were consolidated with Lassater schools by 1952. In 1961 the community was called Warlock and had a church and several scattered dwellings. In 1983 Warlock had a church and a club house.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Jack Reed Harvey, Survey and Proposed Reorganization of the Marion County Schools (M.A. thesis, University of Texas, 1940).

Mark Odintz