North Roby

North Roby, also known as Fisher and possibly as Rainbolt, was 4½ miles north of Roby in north central Fisher County. It was founded in 1885 by land speculator E. D. Strang, who laid out the townsite on land he had purchased from Judge C. R. Breedlove, named the site Fisher, and promoted it for the Fisher county seat. That year a post office called Fisher was opened, with Strang as first postmaster. He also established the Fisher Printing Company. The settlement at that time had at least three stores, a blacksmith shop, a hotel (initially housed in a tent), and a Methodist church. The town included a school by 1889, and it reported a total community population of 200 by 1890. After Roby was established as the county seat in 1886, Strang had difficulties making payments on the townsite, which he had purchased on credit. After the vendor's lien was foreclosed in 1890, Strang left, and Fisher declined, retaining at that time only its church, school, and post office. Around 1902 a Primitive Baptist church was established there, but it later moved to Roby. The school name was changed to North Roby around 1907, and the post office name was changed to North Roby in 1911 or 1912. In 1914 the community had a telephone connection and reported a population of 200, but by 1917 its post office had closed. In 1915 L. C. and Herman Eastland built an electric trolley, called the Roby and Northern, from Roby to North Roby to ship cotton to the Waco-Rotan branch of the Missouri, Kansas and Texas line. In 1922, when the owners decided to close the line, Roby citizens and West Texas Utilities purchased it and continued to run it until 1941 or 1942. By 1925 the North Roby school had consolidated with those in Roby. Though North Roby was still shown with a church on the 1982 county highway map, local histories say that by then the townsite had reverted to farmland with several producing oil wells.