Illinois Colony

Thornberry is at the intersection of Farm roads 2393 and 171, in northwestern Clay County. It was established in 1890 by settlers from Illinois and originally called Illinois Colony. Within a few years of its founding, however, it was renamed Thornberry, after Amos Thornberry, a leading settler and dedicated orchardist who introduced large-scale orchard-based agriculture into the county. By 1891 the community had a post office, although it lasted only until 1908. A proposed rail line linking Thornberry to Wichita Falls was never completed. The population was listed as twenty throughout the 1930s and 1940s. Four rated businesses operated locally in the mid-1930s, two in the late 1940s. From the late 1950s, when the community had three businesses, to 2000, when it had none, Thornberry reported a population of sixty.