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DOT, TEXAS. Dot is on Farm Road 1950 four miles southwest of Chilton in western Falls County. William B. Murphy applied for a post office and suggested that it be called Dot, his daughter's nickname; the post office was granted to the settlement in 1894. Two years later the community had two churches, a hotel, a cotton gin, and fifteen residents. Its post office was discontinued in 1905, and mail for Dot was sent to Chilton. Children from Dot attended nearby Liberty School, which in 1904 had one teacher and eighty-two students; by the mid-1930s it had forty-one students. The community appeared as a school, a church, and several residences on county highway maps in the late 1940s, when its population was twenty-five. The school was consolidated with the Chilton Independent School District in 1949. From 1964 to 1990 the population of Dot was reported as twenty-one. In 2000 the population was seventeen.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Lillian S. St. Romain, Western Falls County, Texas (Austin: Texas State Historical Association, 1951).

Vivian Elizabeth Smyrl

The following, adapted from the Chicago Manual of Style, 15th edition, is the preferred citation for this article.

Handbook of Texas Online, s.v. "," http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/DD/hnd35.html (accessed December 5, 2008).

(NOTE: "s.v." stands for sub verbo, "under the word.")

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Last Updated: January 17, 2008
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