Egypt

Kaufman County, TX

Status: Located – Needs More Research

Year Established: 1800s

Council of Governments: NCTCOG

Public History: Egypt (Little Egypt), twelve miles southeast of Kaufman in eastern Kaufman County, formed sometime before the Civil War. This predominantly Black community extended along Farm Road 1836 from Ayres Chapel on the west to the Cedar Hill church on the east. In the latter half of the 1800s it was a thriving community with a general store, blacksmith shop, and resident physician. A post office opened there in 1876 but closed in 1888. The community is not shown on county highway maps for the 1930s.

Community History: Gloria McCoy grew up in Little Egypt.

“We had electricity but we had no running water,” she says. “We didn’t have any indoor plumbing. We had the outhouse. And we had butane gas. And we did have a telephone.”

This was the 1950s. The McCoy house actually had Little Egypt’s only telephone, says Gloria’s older sister, Joann.

“People in the neighborhood did not have phones but a lot of them got their calls there [her house], and we would run up the road and tell them, ‘So-and-so! Telephone’s for you!’” Joann says.

That road she ran on was all dirt – Little Egypt never got paved. That didn’t bother the sisters.

“We did not feel like we were poor,” Gloria and Joann both say, echoing each others’ comments. “Because we did everything anybody else was doing here.”