Concept

New Boston, Texas

Summary
New Boston is a city in Bowie County, Texas, United States. Boston was named for an early storekeeper in the settlement, W.J. Boston. The coming of the railroads led to the location of two more Bostons. A depot was built approximately four miles north of Boston and was named New Boston. The original Boston then became Old Boston. The courthouse was moved to Texarkana in the early 1880s, but a later election carried to move the courthouse back to the geographic center of the county. This location was between the Bostons. The Post Office Department named this location Boston, so Bowie County has claim to three Bostons: New Boston, Boston, and Old Boston. The population was 4,550 at the 2010 census, and 4,612 in 2020. The Red River Expedition (1806) was stopped by the Spanish in the vicinity of the town. When the Missouri Pacific Railroad was being constructed north of the village of Boston (now Old Boston) in the summer of 1876, it was clear to many businessmen in the town that it would suffer a serious decline as a result of its distance from the line. At a mass meeting, J. H. Smelser, a local resident and surveyor for the railroad, was selected to meet with railroad officials to secure the location of a depot at a point on the line nearest to Boston. The negotiations were successful, and in September 1876, lots were laid out and put up for sale on that the railroad had purchased. Because most of those engaged in the project were from Boston, the new town was named New Boston. A post office was established in 1877 with L. C. DeMorse as postmaster. The town grew rapidly, and by 1884, it had 400 residents, two churches, a school, several mills and gins, and a newspaper, the New Boston Herald, edited by W. W. West. A furniture factory and another newspaper, the Bowie County Populist, were added in the 1890s. By 1900, the town had a population of 762. It grew slowly until the late 1920s, when a short-lived boom raised the population from 869 in 1925 to 1,300 in 1929. The population fell to 949 by 1931.
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