Fox Nation

Gussettville, also known as Fox's Nation or Fox Nation, was on Farm Road 799 six miles southeast of George West in central Live Oak County. The place was named for N. Gussett, an early local merchant. It was founded on land controlled by Patrick McGloin, who moved to Texas with a group of Irish immigrants in 1829. In 1831 McGloin received a grant for 5,240 acres, and with his help a settlement was formed on the tract and named Fox's Nation, in honor of the Fox family, the first settlers there. The community was one of the first settlements in what is now Live Oak County and as early as 1846 served as a stagecoach stop on the road between Corpus Christi and San Antonio. By the mid-1850s it had been renamed Gussettville. In 1856 the state legislature separated Live Oak County from San Patricio County. N. Gussett pushed to have Gussettville designated the county seat and offered to give land for a townsite, but Oakville, a new town, was chosen instead. In 1858 Gussettville became the third town in the county to be granted a post office. The community in 1884 comprised a church, a school, a general store, and thirty residents. The town lost its post office in 1886 and, after being bypassed by the San Antonio, Uvalde and Gulf Railroad in the second decade of the twentieth century, began to fade away. A 1936 map shows only a church, the school, and a few scattered dwellings at the site; in 1945 the school was consolidated with the George West Independent School District. St. Joseph's Catholic Church was still holding services there in 2001, and a number of people continued to live in the general vicinity.