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Lone Grove is one of the oldest communities in Llano County; it got its name from a grove of pecan trees between Dreary Hollow and the Little Llano River, about eight miles northeast of where the town of Llano would be built a few years later. John Coggin opened a stage stop and store there in 1852, and a short time later the Carter brothers (George, Doc and Ben) settled nearby. The first school was a half-mile up the Little Llano River; it was a log building with a dirt floor and split log benches to sit on.

In 1858, with Llano County absorbing hundreds of new settlers, the Comanches went on the warpath. The Civil War put westward expansion to a virtual halt in the 1860s, and many of the men left the frontier to fight in the Confederate army; the Comanches wreaked havoc throughout the county for more than a decade, and the settlers found it very difficult to keep horses (almost indispensable for frontier life) from being stolen. Many pioneers gave up and headed back east. Those who stayed were the fiercest and toughest of a very hardy lot.

In 1874, Albert and George Templeton bought the Coggin business, and ran a general merchandise store, post office, a saddle shop, a blacksmith shop and a cotton gin in the center of Lone Grove. Other prominent area families were the Hatleys, Herridges, Perrys, Conners and Millers. A rivalry grew between the Carter and Coggin families, with Hatleys and Templetons joining the Coggin faction, while most of the rest sided with the Carters.

After several angry confrontations, the feud boiled over in 1882 when John Coggin and two of the Hatleys were arrested for stealing horses from the Carters and selling them in San Marcos. According to an account on the wall of the Lone Grove Community Center, the two rival groups were both in Llano on the day of the trial. The Carter faction had gathered in the Barler and Buttery store on Main Street (owned partly by Miles Barler, a deputy sheriff who was related to the Carters) when they were called out by the Coggin party. About eight men on each side faced off in a wild shoot-out in downtown Llano, and two of the Coggin faction were killed.

According to a 1977 interview with Robert McCall, the judge declared a mistrial in the horse-stealing case, and all the combatants returned to Lone Grove; no one was charged in connection with the shoot-out. The next year, there was another shoot-out when the two parties met at the Broad Branch Cemetery. No one was killed or wounded, but quite a few tombstones were damaged. Later in 1883, there was yet another shootout, this one around the livery stable in Llano (less than a block away from the first Llano shootout). In this fight, “Hogjaw” Coggin was killed; this death of one of the leaders stopped the fight, but (according to an interview with Elsie Herridge) the vengeful Coggin faction determined to ambush their enemies on the way back to Lone Grove.

The Coggin gunmen hid behind a rock outcropping next to the cattle trail which led from Llano to Lone Grove, but the Carters were prepared, and the final shootout resulted in a fourth Coggin man being killed. The remaining Coggin men decided to leave Llano County, and the feud ended; law and order was gradually restored to Lone Grove, and the little community prospered as the commercial center for miles of farms. In 1910, citizens came together to build a beautiful new school for the growing number of school-age children.

Lone Grove was a stopping-point on the highway from Austin and Burnet to Llano, and with the advent of automobiles, the stores in Lone Grove added gas pumps. Cars came by every once in a while during the day, each one raising a cloud of dust on the gravel highway; no one drove much faster than 40 mph, and many of them stopped at one of the Lone Grove stores. It was not uncommon for a Lone Grove resident to hitch a ride into Llano with one of the travelers from Bluffton or Tow; residents of those three communities and Llano knew each other well, and often helped each other in whatever way they could. Jim Overstreet was in charge of mail delivery; he made a trip into Llano each day, often bringing other supplies to Lone Grove along with the daily mail. Many Lone Grove residents would go into Llano to shop or see the “picture show” on Saturdays.

The community reached its peak in 1938, when 125 children attended the school, which had been expanded to five classrooms. “There were houses all up and down the Little Llano River,” recalls longtime resident Norman Livingston, whose parents moved to Lone Grove that year (on November 15, the day before his 13th birthday).

For a little community, Lone Grove offered quite a well-rounded education, and the school was known for its successful basketball and tennis teams. In 1935, the Lone Grove girls doubles tennis team, Cleo Cook (Broxton) and Ellen Nobles (McCall) won the true state championship (there were no school classifications like 1A or 5A; they beat everybody!) Norman Livingston played on the boys’ basketball team; his childhood sweetheart, Maudine Templeton played doubles tennis with Norvelle Ligon.

There were three gravel tennis courts at Lone Grove School, as well as a basketball court, a volleyball court and a baseball field, but the school did not have electricity until the late 1930s, or indoor plumbing. Livingston recalls the fateful day after Pearl Harbor, when President Roosevelt made his “day of infamy” speech asking congress to declare war. The high school students gathered around a battery-powered radio (near the wood stove) to listen. One teacher assured the boys that they didn’t have to worry about going to war. “That thing will be over with before you’re out of school.” The teacher was wrong.

The death knell had already been sounded for the Lone Grove School when Buchanan Dam was finished in 1937. A new bridge and highway had been built from Burnet to Llano, bypassing Lone Grove. But it was World War II which caused the mass exodus from the little town. Many young people joined the military and went off to fight (Norman Livingston was the youngest at age 18; Pete Overstreet was the oldest at age 34). Many others went to the big cities, where there were many factory jobs related to the war effort. Most never came back to Lone Grove; Livingston and Overstreet (the Llano County Road Supervisor from 1946 to 1958, and the county commissioner from Pct. #2 for the next 16 years) were two of the exceptions. Houses were left empty to fall down, burn, or be torn down, and farms were merged into large ranches. The school system consolidated with Llano in 1948.

A major renovation of the old building was done in 1956, when the school was down-sized and made into a community center. It was fixed up again in the 1980s. Now the Community Club and the Restoration Committee are planning a benefit fish fry, auction and raffle for June 26 to raise money for more much-needed repairs to the century-old building. For more information, please contact Elaine Adams at 325-247-3588 or Sandra Overstreet at 325-247-5017.