Native New Yorkers

I have been to New York, Texas. There may not even be a store there now [1998], though. When the Cotton Belt Railroad entered Henderson County, lots of towns were practically wiped out.

A few years ago there was an article in Texas Highways Magazine about a family who bought a farm in the New York community and began a bed and breakfast business. They also specialized in “New York Cheesecake."

Each second Saturday of the month the owner holds an old-fashioned antique auction in the barn, where buyers perch on bales of hay. Aside from cheesecake, New York, Texas is also home to a few farms and ranches, a cemetery, a church, and a feed store and market owned by descendants of Davis Reynolds, who settled the area in 1856.

As Uncle Dan wrote, some say the Reynolds named the place New York in hopes of big-city prosperity. Others say he patched his original store with shipping crate boards stamped "Made in New York." Locals called it the New York Store; the town name followed suit. In any event, in 1901 prospects for growth slipped away when the railroad bypassed the community."

After I read Uncle Dan’s article, I went to visit my half-sister, Nelda, in Athens, and we had cheesecake in New York on that farm. I sent cheesecake to my children from there. I loved sitting on that porch with cake and coffee and looking out over the farm that might well have been owned by my great-great grandparents, John Davis and Katie Reynolds.