DOBYVILLE, TEXAS. Dobyville was near U.S. Highway 281 twelve miles north of Burnet in northern Burnet County. Jacob and Adaline Wolf and Silas and Rebecca Shelburn were among the first settlers in the 1850s, soon after Burnet County was established. Mail was delivered to the community as early as 1858 through a post office called O'Hair's Hill; when that office was discontinued, the mail was routed through Naruna or Lampasas. The Dobyville post office was established in 1874 with Thomas S. Wolf as postmaster. It closed in 1884 but reopened under the name Pomona in 1889 and operated until 1900. Afterward, mail for the community was again sent to Naruna.

Lone Star School at Dobyville was established in 1878. By the mid-1880s the community had steam grist and syrup mills, a cotton gin, and thirty residents; cotton, livestock, and grain were the principal products shipped by area farmers. In the mid-1890s the school at Dobyville had one teacher and fifty-six students. The school building also served as a community center until 1911, when the structure burned. Lone Star School was consolidated with Lake Victor School in 1921. Dobyville's big annual entertainment was the spring rabbit drive, which took place on a Saturday in late March or early April; families would gather for a day of hunting and picnicking. A few scattered houses marked the community on county highway maps in the 1940s; only a cemetery remained by the 1980s.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Darrell Debo, Burnet County History (2 vols., Burnet, Texas: Eakin, 1979).

Vivian Elizabeth Smyrl