RANDOLPH, TEXAS (Fannin County). Randolph is at the junction of State highways 121 and 11, eight miles southwest of Bonham in Fannin County. The area was first settled in the late 1830s. During the late 1840s Thomas Lindsey set aside four acres for a church, school, and cemetery to the north of John McCoy Patton's general store and farm. Patton's lumber business provided wood for the surrounding farms. The little settlement that developed was called Lindsey School House. In 1887 the community of Randolph, named for Judge Tom Randolph of Sherman, was founded on the Louisiana, Arkansas and Texas Railway line three-quarters of a mile southwest of the Lindsey school. That same year a post office was established at this new townsite. According to the Bonham News of 1888, the town had a store, a good school, and a saloon. By 1900 Randolph also had a lumbermill, a brickyard, and a cotton gin. A bank opened there in 1905, and by 1925 the town population had reached 221. Growth continued during the Great Depression,^qv and Randolph reported twelve businesses by 1935. At the close of World War II^qv the town had ten stores, a bank, three churches, three doctors, three cotton gins, and a public school enrollment of 226. By the end of 1945 its population was 225, but the bank had closed, and the number of businesses had begun to decrease. Though passenger and freight trains still passed through Randolph in 1947, the rail traffic began to be replaced by truck traffic on the nearby highways to Sherman. Without the trains, Randolph rapidly declined, and by 1952 it had only five businesses. By 1966 its population was 125, and by 1980 it was seventy. In 1985 Randolph still had its combination post office, gas station, and grocery store; two other businesses had opened there sometime after 1980. Some new homes were also built during this period. In 1984 a Texas Historical Commission^qv marker was placed at the Lindsey-Randolph Cemetery. In 2000 Randolph, which still had its post office, continued to report a population of seventy.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Floy Crandall Hodge, A History of Fannin County (Hereford, Texas: Pioneer, 1966). Kathleen E. and Clifton R. St. Clair, eds., Little Towns of Texas (Jacksonville, Texas: Jayroe Graphic Arts, 1982). Fred Tarpley, Place Names of Northeast Texas (Commerce: East Texas State University, 1969).

Deborah K. Kilgore