Emberson

Emberson, a small farming community, is just north of the intersection of Farm roads 1499 and 1500 and seven miles northwest of Paris in north central Lamar County. It was named in honor of founder John Emberson, who arrived in the area in 1824. The community's post office was established in 1878. By 1884 the settlement had become important in cotton shipping and reported a population of 150, with three churches, a two-teacher district school, two physicians, a general store, a blacksmith shop, a cotton gin, and a gristmill. At that time John Goodgion served as postmaster, and mail arrived semiweekly. In 1889 the local school reported 148 students and four teachers. The community's population had increased to 175 by 1890, when there were also two new general stores. By 1892, however, the population was 100; that year residents reported a Baptist church, two new cotton gins, a new icehouse, another general store, and a drug emporium. The community's population was 133 in 1904, and the next year its post office closed. By 1931 the community had only four businesses. The 1936 county highway map showed four businesses (including a cotton gin), two churches, a school, a cemetery, and a cluster of dwellings at Emberson. In 1947 the community's population was fifty, and only one business was reported. By 1957 the school had been consolidated into the Central Independent School District. Emberson reported seventy-five residents in 1970 and eighty in 1975. In 1980 maps showed the community as a cluster of houses near the intersection of two dirt roads. Emberson reported eighty residents in 1990 and again in 2000.