DITTO, TEXAS. Ditto is on the Atascosa River five miles northwest of Poteet in northern Atascosa County. Before it got a post office the community went by the name of Agua Negra, which referred to the dark water that came out of a natural spring containing iron oxide. Records of settlement date back to the late 1700s, when the area was part of the San Jose Mission Ranch. The first post office in the area was called Mottomosa, from Spanish Mota Mosa ("beautiful grove"), and was discontinued in 1875. When the postmaster applied for a new post office in 1881, he wrote out the word ditto on the form to indicate that the office should have the same name as before, but his intention was misinterpreted and the town became Ditto.

In 1884 Ditto had a population of fifty, a steam gristmill and gin, a church, and a school that went by the name Agua Negra. In 1885 a petition to make Ditto the Atascosa county seat instead of Pleasanton would have passed except that the women signers were disqualified. In the 1890s the town's population decreased to twenty, but the number of businesses increased; at least two gins and one general store served area residents. In 1896, the last year for which population figures are available, the population of Ditto was listed at twenty.

In 1904 Ditto had one school with seventy-eight white students and two teachers and another with thirty-three black students and one teacher. In 1914 fifty-five white students and seventeen black students attended the two Agua Negra schools in Ditto. Thirty-four students and two teachers were recorded for Agua Negra School in 1934. In the late 1930s Ditto area students were transferred to Poteet. From the 1940s to the 1960s a few scattered dwellings stood at the site. Ditto does not appear on later maps.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Atascosa County History (Pleasanton, Texas: Atascosa History Committee, 1984).

Linda Peterson