KENSING, TEXAS. Kensing is on Farm Road 895 six miles east of Charleston in extreme eastern Delta County. It was established early in the 1900s around the Dee Flanniken (Flannagan) lumber mill, in the richly wooded delta of the Old and the South Sulphur rivers. The town name combines the last syllables of Flanniken and Sansing, family names of early settlers. A Kensing school was established in 1902. Most settlers moved out of the area once the lumber was depleted and the mill shut down. In 1933 there were only ten inhabitants and one business. Maps for 1936 showed a church, a school, and a cluster of twenty dwellings at the intersection of two dirt roads. In 1945 Kensing reported twenty-five residents. The school was still open in 1951 but had been closed by 1963, when the community had a business and a few scattered farms. In 1970 local children were attending school in the Cooper Independent School District. Kensing appeared on maps of 1984 as a church and cemetery. In 2000 the population was thirty-five.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Paul Garland Hervey, A History of Education in Delta County, Texas (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Texas, 1951). Wilma Ross and Billie Phillips, Photos and Tales of Delta County (1976).

Vista K. McCroskey