Townsen Mills

Adamsville is at the junction of U.S. Highway 281 and Farm Road 581, on the Lampasas River 16½ miles north of Lampasas in northern Lampasas County. It was founded around 1856. Early ranchers in the area included Joseph Leland Straley, who built one of the first houses in the area, and the brothers Jasper and Perry Townsen. During the 1870s a number of small cattle drives were organized in the community, in which cattle were driven short distances to join the larger cattle trails to the north. In 1872 Jasper Townsen built a mill on Mill Branch, near the spot where the creek joins the Lampasas River, two miles southeast of the current town. This mill was originally established to saw lumber from the Round Rock area; eventually a mill for wheat and corn was added, and the mills served communities throughout the entire county.

One of the earliest stores was operated by McCall Smith, a Presbyterian minister, and John Adams. A second general store was located near the mills; when a post office was established in this store in 1876, with Perry Townsen as the first postmaster, the community took the name Townsen Mills. Some of the first public surveying in Lampasas County was carried out on nearby Simms Creek in the late 1870s, and the surveyors suffered several Indian attacks while carrying out their work. Adamsville's first church, the Cumberland Presbyterian, was established in 1881. In 1885 the first local school, called Straley's School, was built north of town; this building also doubled as a church for the Baptists and the Presbyterians.