Pate

Hoen (Hoehn), also known as Pate, is on Farm Road 308 about four miles northeast of Leroy in northeastern McLennan County. It was established in the late 1800s by the George Hoehn family. The community became a flag stop on the International and Great Northern line when the tracks were laid from Waco to Fort Worth in 1903. The railroad misspelled the family name, and the community became known as Hoen. In 1910 Hoen had a store, a cotton gin, and forty residents. A post office was established there in April 1912, with William W. Pate as postmaster, and for a short time the community was called Pate. Its post office was discontinued in February 1913, and mail was sent to Mount Calm. In the 1930s Hoen had a seven-grade school that became the focus of an independent school district. The district was consolidated with the schools of West in 1934. A few scattered houses and a business marked the community on the 1948 county highway map. The Missouri Pacific abandoned the track between Waco and Maypearl in the mid-1960s, depriving Hoen of its rail service. Hoen's population was reported at forty from the 1930s through the 1960s. A few farmhouses were all that remained in the 1970s, when a local estimate gave the number of residents as six.