Ash

Ash, a farming community sixteen miles southwest of Crockett on Farm Road 1280 in southwestern Houston County, was founded in 1870 and named for James B. Ash, a community leader. A post office opened there in 1890, and by 1896 the community had a gristmill-gin and general store. An Ash school that began operating around the same time had an enrollment of fifty-eight in 1897. Although the post office closed in 1909, in the mid-1930s the town still had a church, two stores, and a number of houses; the estimated population in 1936 was ten. After World War II the stores closed, and by the early 1970s only a church and a number of scattered houses remained. In the early 1990s Ash was a dispersed rural community for which no population estimates were available. In 2000, however, the population was nineteen.