Elm Creek

Old Troy was on Big Elm Creek nine miles north of Temple and two miles north of the current site of Troy in northeastern Bell County. Settlers began arriving in the vicinity in the 1850s, and there was an Elm Creek post office on the site from 1854 to 1876. The Elm Creek community was also a stage stop on the line from Waco to Belton to Austin. In 1876 residents changed the name of the post office and the community to Troy, perhaps after Troy, New York, presumably the former hometown of a Troy, Texas, citizen. When the Missouri, Kansas and Texas Railroad came through the area in the early 1880s, a station was built two miles south of Troy. Most of the citizens moved there, but others refused to leave the old site of the town, and for a time Old Troy and New Troy coexisted. In 1903 there was still an Old Troy school that had some sixty pupils and two teachers, but the community disappeared by 1927. In 1973 there was an Old Troy cemetery on the site.

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.