Wilhite

Maxey is on Farm Road 38 fourteen miles west of Paris in Lamar County. The area was first settled in the 1850s. A post office was granted in 1880 and named Nixon, after an early settler of the area, T. E. Nixon, who had served under Gen. Samuel Bell Maxey during the Civil War. When they discovered that a Nixon, Texas, already existed, Nixon and other settlers named the town after Maxey. Benjamin E. Wilhite was the first postmaster. The population peaked in 1896, when the town had 250 residents, two stores, and a one-teacher school with thirty-nine pupils. The population was fifty in 1914 and seventy-five in 1925. The post office was discontinued in 1931, and mail was directed through Brookston. The population was estimated at forty in the 1960s, fifty in the 1970s, and fifty-five in the 1980s. In 1990 Maxey had a population of fifty-five and no businesses. The population remained the same in 2000.

Adapted from the official Handbook of Texas, a state encyclopedia developed by the Texas State Historical Association (TSHA). It is an authoritative source of trusted historical records.