Ohio Colony

Ohio Colony, along with its cousins Illinois Colony and Iowa Colony, was a neighborhood settlement in extreme western Matagorda County located just northwest of Palacios, which provided it with most services except for church and school. Settled during the railroad-boosted wave of immigration to the county during the early 1900s, it was named after the home state of its inhabitants. By at least 1916 Ohio Colony had a school, which in 1924 served seven grades and was part of common school district No. 21. The school also hosted church services and community gatherings. Sometime during the early 1920s a school building from Ohio Colony reportedly was moved to a community called Pheasant, where it continued to serve as a school and church. County highway maps for the 1930s show a number of widely scattered farm units in the area northwest of Palacios where Ohio Colony stood. With the coming of improved transportation and school consolidation these communities gradually disappeared; they are not shown on 1952 topographical maps.