Edom

Edom, at the crossing of Farm roads 279, 314, and 2339, sixteen miles southeast of Canton in southeast Van Zandt County, is the third oldest town in the county. It was first established several miles from its present site in 1849 and organized as a post office called Hamburg in 1852. In 1855 the post office moved one mile south of the present townsite. There it was renamed Edom for the name given to Esau in the book of Genesis. Local saloons filled with lumberjacks, freighters, and traders as the community became a stopover on the Porter's Bluff and Tyler Road. Sometime later the town was moved again to its present location. By 1860 it had a Baptist church, a Methodist church, a hotel, a Masonic lodge, a sawmill, a tanyard, a wagon factory, and a boot, shoe, and saddle shop. The Edom schools, which opened in 1866 with children of former Indian captive Cynthia Parker in attendance, enrolled 130 pupils in 1904. By 1876 a Grange was formed, and local farmers responded to worsening 1880s farm prices by forming a chapter of the Farmers' Alliance at nearby Red Hill on November 20, 1885. By 1914 the town had a cotton gin and four general stores. Railroad service failed to reach Edom, yet its population grew from 150 in the 1890s to between 200 and 300, where it remained from the 1920s to the present. Edom was an independent school district until 1966, when it was consolidated with Van. Artisans in pottery, silver jewelry, glassware, macrame, and leather crafts who settled in the town in the 1960s began Edom's annual arts and crafts fair in 1972. The community was incorporated in 1966 with 300 residents but lost its post office in 1976. In 1988 Edom had three businesses, the frontier Red Hill cemetery at or near the townsite, and an estimated 277 inhabitants. The population was 300 in 1990 and 322 in 2000.

Adapted from the official Handbook of Texas, a state encyclopedia developed by the Texas State Historical Association (TSHA). It is an authoritative source of trusted historical records.