Cheneyboro

Cheneyboro, on the banks of Richland Creek Reservoir four miles south of Navarro in south central Navarro County, was established in the early 1880s. It was named in honor of Francis Marion Cheney, an early settler who built his home from lumber that was cut from his land and milled at his sawmill on the banks of Richland Creek. This house survived into the 1980s, although it had been moved to a new site in central Navarro County. Cheney also built a brick commissary for his farmhands and a ticket depot for the Trinity and Brazos Valley Railway. The Rock Island and Pacific and the Burlington Northern and Chicago lines also once passed through this one-store supply point. In 1936 the community had a population of twenty, a church, a cemetery, and a few scattered dwellings. By 1940 its population had grown to fifty. In 1990 the site was marked only by a cemetery. By 2000, however, the population had grown to 100.