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History in
a Pecan Shell
The settlement is said to have been named for a petticoat lost (and
evidently found) at a local dance. The garment had been recycled
from an old coffee sack and had retained the stenciled name: Java
The area was first settled in the late 1840s and early 1850s by
settlers from Alabama and Tennessee, but as a community, Java did’t
expand until the 1890s, when prison crews from the Texas State Penitentiary
in Rusk came to mine coal to fuel the state-owned iron furnace.
A small trading post consisting of a general store and sawmill grew
up at the site, and a post office was opened there in 1895.
In 1906, after the Texas State Railroad was constructed from Rusk
to Palestine, the Java post office was closed. Within a short time
most of the merchants and residents had moved to the newly founded
town of Maydelle,
on the railroad.
In 2010, Java
will celebrate it’s centennial as a ghost town.
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