Prattville

Prattville is on dirt roads 1½ miles south of the town of Lake Creek and just west of Post Oak Creek in central Delta County. The area was inhabited by 1881, when William B. Pratt opened the post office, which he named Prattville. By 1882 a community of some 100 citizens, mostly farmers, had developed around Pratt's General Store and the post office. The major businesses included several steam cotton gins, three gristmills, and a sawmill owned by Wilson and Company. The Perkins School, named for a local landowner, opened with C. C. Dunagan and J. A. Perkins holding classes for local children. By 1884 the mail was semiweekly, and there were several new cotton gins and gristmills, a livestock dealer, two general stores, two wagonmakers, and a blacksmith shop. At that time the fifty residents also had the services of a new doctor, several teachers, a lawyer, and the Reverend J. W. Wilson. Postal officer W. B. Pratt reported that mail arrived daily in 1888, when there was also a new distillery. By that year, however, many local businesses and cotton growers were moving to larger railroad towns like nearby Cooper and Lake Creek, and Prattville began to decline. Its major businesses in 1890 were two blacksmith shops, a gristmill and gin, and a general store. In 1936 Prattville had sixty residents, the school, a church, two factories, and one other business, but only one business was reported there by 1945. The Perkins School merged with the Cooper and East Delta districts in 1949. A 1964 map showed a few scattered farms near the townsite. By 1970 local students attended classes within the Cooper Independent School District. Prattville was still shown on the 1984 county highway map.