Graytown

Graytown is on Farm Road 2579 some eleven miles northwest of Floresville in western Wilson County. It was named for Scottish immigrant James Gray, who brought in laborers and renters to develop the land that his wife, Simona Fernandez Seguín, inherited from her father. St. James Church, completed in 1854 and dedicated by Bishop Jean Marie Odin, became the religious center for all Catholics within a thirty-mile radius. The name of the church was changed in 1877 to Our Lady of Guadalupe. When its post office was established in 1860, the community was in Bexar County, but a boundary change put it in Wilson County in 1869. For many years the post office was a gathering place for area cowboys and ranchers. A school was in operation at the community by 1896, when it had an enrollment of sixty-four. A peak Graytown population of 369 was reached in 1900, but after that many residents moved to nearby Elmendorf on the railroad. The post office closed in 1912, but as late as the mid-1930s the town still had a school, a store, a church, and a number of houses. After World War II the school and store were closed, and in the early 1990s Graytown was a dispersed community with a population of sixty-four. The population remained the same in 2000.