Viola

Viola was nine miles southeast of Wayne and twenty miles southeast of Linden in southeastern Cass County. It was settled in the 1870s and named for Viola Cobb by her father, William Cobb, an early settler who operated a gristmill and gin in the village. A post office was established in Viola in 1879, with James M. Smith as postmaster. By 1884 the town consisted of four churches, a school, a gristmill, a cotton gin, a general store, and an estimated population of sixty. The population of the town reached an estimated seventy-five in 1896 but apparently never grew any larger. The post office was closed in 1905, and by 1936 Viola no longer existed as a named community.