Mount Olivet

Windsor is at the intersection of Farm roads 3268 and 3047, near the Middle Bosque River twelve miles west of Waco in west central McLennan County. It took its name from Windsor Ranch, which was the property of Harry Chauncey Chamberlin from 1899 until his death in 1955. Chamberlin's family home was Windsor, Vermont. The area was settled in 1852 by William Oliver, who called it Evergreen. About 1860 he and his neighbors built a church and schoolhouse, one of the first schools in the county outside of Waco. The Waco-Gatesville stage route had its first relay stable a mile west of Oliver's blacksmith shop. The community was later named Mount Olivet and in May 1872 acquired a post office, which operated until 1885. On May 3, 1890, the community store was designated the post office for the region under the name of Ryan. This post office closed in 1902. Chamberlin later operated a cotton gin at the nearby intersection of the McGregor-Waco road and the Ocee-Crawford road. The gin burned sometime before 1920. The community also supported grist and flour mills, two blacksmiths, a doctor and a dentist, a general store, and two churches during the 1890s. In 1912 the Evergreen school district (in operation since 1895) was consolidated with the Hawthorne, Highland, and Ocee school districts. Chamberlin donated four acres of land on which a brick school building was erected; this building was used until 1950, when district lines were redrawn, and the building was abandoned and demolished. The old Evergreen Cemetery just above the river is maintained through a trust fund by an organization of descendants, and a reunion is held there annually. The population of Windsor was estimated at twenty-one in 1896, ten in 1933, thirty in 1945, and twenty in 1980. In 1990 Windsor was still listed as a community.