A Little History of Yarboro Lake
Colonel James Quincy Yarborough founded the community in the late 1870s southeast of Navasota. Colonel Yarborough had earned the ‘colonel’ tag not as ‘honorary’ but serving as a young man as a Colonel in his native Alabama State Militia service. The Colonel was born Sept. 8, 1827, in Coosa County, Alabama. He grew up on his father’s farm, married at the age of 21 and began life as a planter. Unsettled with the death of his first wife in 1852, the Colonel trekked off to California to shortly return to Alabama; but then, in 1859, came to Texas.
The Colonel first settled in the Apolonia area of Grimes County. With the onset of the Civil War, he joined Company H. of Carter’s Regiment as a private to serve in Texas, Arkansas and Louisiana.
At the close of the war, he joined up with merchants Lewis J. Wilson and W. E. Howell, under the firm name of Wilson, Yarborough & Company, at Anderson, as well as Apolonia and Navasota. In 1875, Yarborough ‘disposed of his interest in the business,’ and on his own launched the Yarborough settlement on the Gulf, Colorado & Santa Fe Railway line, 10 miles from Navasota. There he operated a steam-powered gristmill and cotton gin, and the town of Yarborough burgeoned into a shipping point for cotton, cottonseed and other agricultural products. A post office was established and an influx of German immigrants brought a group of Lutherans to the area. The Salem Lutheran church was organized, and the town developed with three general stores, a train depot with a telegraph office and schools. The depot was unusual in that it consisted of the usual two waiting rooms, as well as living quarters for the depot agent and his family. The Colonel himself had donated the grounds, as well as cash, for development of the depot and rail line.
https://www.navasotaexaminer.com/article/news/why-did-yarborough-become-yarboro
