Armstrong

Armstrong is a small rural community located about six miles south of Belton and west of Farm Road 1123 in central Bell County. Settlement in the area had taken place by the late 1800s, and inventor and merchant John T. Dulaney operated a well-known complex there that consisted of a gristmill, general store, blacksmith shop, and cotton gin until the early 1900s. By 1915, when the neighborhood schools of Elm Grove and Summers Mill (or Sommer's Mill) voted to consolidate, school trustee C. I. Armstrong donated the land for a school for a newly created district to be called Armstrong School District 115, from which the community took its name. Local citizens completed the construction of a new school building on May 25, 1916, and classes began later that year. County highway maps in the 1930s identified the region as Armstrong School, which served area children for several decades. By 1960 the communities of Belton, Holland, and Salado had absorbed the entire Armstrong district, and the school closed. By the mid-1960s the brick structure was being used as a community center. Armstrong reported twenty-five residents in 1970, the first year for which population statistics were available for the community. From 1980 through 2000 the population was reported as twenty-two. In 2005, though the only visible vestige of the community was the Armstrong Community Center, the facility remained an active site for group meetings, holiday celebrations, and a homecoming every October.