Cawthon

Cawthon is a small rural community on Farm Road 159 four miles south of Millican and seventeen miles south of Bryan in southern Brazos County. The site was within the lands of Stephen F. Austin's colony and was settled before the Civil War. A townsite did not develop, however, until after the International-Great Northern Railroad was built from Navasota to Hearne in the early 1900s. The town was named for early settler Will Cawthon. A post office operated at the community from 1912 to 1956. In 1925 the town had a population of twenty-five, two general stores, a railroad express and telegraph agent, a physician, a butcher, and a blacksmith. The community had a store and a population of ten in 1940. The 1948 county highway map indicated a church, a school, two businesses, and several scattered dwellings at Cawthon. By 1964 the community reported a population of seventy-five and no businesses. Cawthon in 1990 had scattered farm buildings, the old International and Great Northern Depot, and an estimated seventy-five residents. The population remained the same in 2000.