Rural Shade

Rural Shade, a farming community on Farm Road 635 twenty miles southeast of Corsicana in southeastern Navarro County, was first settled in 1850 by Hugh and Washington Ingram. A post office was established there in 1858. Around 1870 James Ingram, one of Hugh's sons, built the first steam-powered gristmill in the area. By 1885 Rural Shade consisted of a blacksmith shop, a sawmill, three gristmills, three general stores, four cotton gins, and an estimated population of seventy-five. Two schools were in operation by 1906, with a total enrollment of 145. During the 1930s Rural Shade included a school, two churches, and five or six stores. After World War II its school was consolidated with the Kerens school, and the stores closed. By the mid-1960s only a church and a number of scattered houses remained. In 1990 Rural Shade was a dispersed rural community. The population was thirty in 2000.