Clardy

Clardy is on Farm Road 905 fourteen miles southeast of Paris in southeast Lamar County. It grew up around the J. M. Dunlap store, in which the post office was established in 1899. James Dunlap, the storeowner and first postmaster, submitted a list of the surnames of six families living in the community from which the post office department chose the name. The post office was discontinued in 1907. In 1936 the community had a school, a church, and twenty-five residences within a one-mile radius. The population of Clardy peaked at fifty in the late 1940s, when one business, the local store, was in operation. In 1989 the community listed twenty-five telephone numbers, and the Bethel Baptist Church still held weekly church services and Sunday School classes.