Graball

Graball was near Rocky Creek two miles from the Navasota River and twenty miles northeast of Brenham in extreme northeastern Washington County. In 1876 a post office was established there and named for a local storeowner. By 1884 Graball had three general stores, a drugstore, and a population of forty. In the 1880s black residents, who made up 80 percent of the population, were Republicans. In 1886 the local electoral board included two black officials. That year the Ku Klux Klan destroyed the community's ballot box. Electoral violence at Graball was later the subject of a congressional investigation. By 1892 Graball had 100 residents. Its population remained stable in the late 1890s, but the subsequent extension of rail lines in Washington and nearby Grimes counties made Graball less competitive with communities nearer the shipping centers, and it declined. The post office closed in 1908, and the community disappeared in the early twentieth century. The Graball Cemetery is the site of a Texas historical marker honoring Amos Gates, one of the Old Three Hundred.