Providence

Providence was a small rural community located in central Burnet County between Burnet and Bertram. According to local sources, Providence was named for a community in Alabama, which had been named for Providence, Rhode Island. The focus of the community was a one-room schoolhouse which was built in the mid-1870s on the south bank of the Russell Fork of the San Gabriel River. In the 1890s the school had one teacher and forty-five students. A new school was built in 1923, and a room was added in 1929. The school was consolidated with the Bertram Independent School District in 1939. County highway maps showed a few scattered houses in the area in the 1940s, but the community was not labeled, and no population estimates were available. No evidence of the community appeared on county highway maps in the 1980s.