Jennings, TX

Jennings, on Farm Road 905 and Big Sandy Creek four miles southeast of Paris in southeastern Lamar County, was named for the brothers Wiley P., John, and William Jennings, who first settled the area. The Jennings community had a post office from 1885 to 1907. Though the railroad had bypassed the community by 1890, that year Jennings had two general stores and a drugstore, and mail for its twenty-five residents was delivered triweekly. By 1892 mail was delivered daily, but the local drugstore had closed. The Jennings school had one female teacher and thirty-eight students in 1896. During the 1930s Jennings had the school, a cotton gin, two stores, and thirty inhabitants. In 1937 the community reported sixty-nine students in elementary school and thirty-five in high school. In the late 1940s the Jennings population peaked at sixty. A 1963 map identified Jennings as a small, scattered collection of homes. The community was still named on the 1983 county highway map.