KING, TEXAS. King is on Farm Road 1783 and Cowhouse Creek twelve miles southwest of Gatesville in west central Coryell County. It was once known as Stringtown because settlers built their homes in a line along the creek. The Stringtown Baptist Church was established in 1875. When the community applied for a post office in 1882, the postal service rejected the name Stringtown. Residents then submitted the name King, in honor of Henry King, a local storeowner. John W. Seay was the first postmaster. By the mid-1880s King had a steam gristmill and cotton gin, three churches, a district school, and a population of eighty; area farmers shipped cotton, corn, and oats. The town reached its peak in the 1890s, when it had 100 residents. The population remained fairly stable until the early 1940s, when it fell to twenty-five. The post office at King was discontinued in September 1953, and mail for the community was sent to Gatesville. In the 1980s a business, a church, and a cemetery marked the community on county highway maps, and the population was reported as twenty-five; residents still numbered twenty-five in 1990 and 2000.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Coryell County Genealogical Society, Coryell County, Texas, Families, 1854-1985 (Dallas: Taylor, 1986). John J. Germann and Myron Janzen, Texas Post Offices by County (1986).

Vivian Elizabeth Smyrl