Pretty Priddy

Cedar Oak

Priddy Woman, Priddy in Pink, ‘Priddy Maids All in a Row’, ‘I Feel Priddy’, ‘Priddy Little Angel Eyes’… and more, and more puns. Driving into this tiny town sparked all sorts of silliness from Dave and me. We did calm down enough to look for the historical marker and to learn a bit about this Priddy little town in Mills County.









About thirty years before Priddy became a town, Thomas Jefferson Priddy patrolled the area as a Texas Ranger. He and several other

Land near Priddy

Rangers tracked a Comanche raiding party that had killed four of the Mose Jackson family and had stolen two of their surviving children. The Rangers were able to recover the kidnapped children safely. It was another 20 years, the 1870s, before settlers of German ancestry began coming to the area. Priddy was named for Thomas Jefferson Priddy. After his stint as a Texas Ranger, he and his family moved to the area in about 1886, establishing a small farm. Soon there were more settlers in adding to the community. Eventually the settlers asked for and got a post office; Priddy was named the first postmaster.

The Zion Evangelical Lutheran Church was created in 1889 under the

Zion Evangelical Lutheran Church

leadership of the Reverend R. Seils. Before the church was constructed, services were held in the Bismark Schoolhouse, about two miles south of where the church now stands. They began with 23 charter members but the congregation grew steadily. Three years later a small sanctuary and a cemetery were established on the church property. More families arrived, and the congregation outgrew the old church. In 1929 a new sanctuary was built. The church has served Mills County for generations and continues to do so.










Although Priddy never became a boomtown, its population has remained fairly stable.  Priddy ISD (the Priddy Pirates) has one school for students in grades Kindergarten through Twelve; the town has a population of

Windmills

about 250 on a good day. Priddy was once home to a bank, a cotton gin, and general store, but now it only has the general store/deli, a feed store, and an auto shop. Stegemoller Store, that eventually became Hohertz General Store and Deli, opened for business in 1900. Roy Stegemoller, like most of the predominantly German population, came to the region to farm. While most of the people made their living raising cotton, Stegemoller found it much more productive to provide the community with groceries, notions and hardware. The store remained open throughout the Depression, with Stegemoller extending credit to his customers during these hard times. In 1980, Jean and Walton Hohertz bought the Stegemoller store and changed its name to the Hohertz General Store and Deli. It once served icy cold beer and excellent sandwiches.

Wild Poinsettia

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