History

Shortly after the end of the Civil War, a railroad line was run from Houston to Texarkana passing through largely unpopulated sandy lands of what is now Robertson County.

Along this railroad route, the village of Bremond (named for the Houston businessman that influenced the building of the Houston to Texarkana railroad) sprang up in the late 1860's. Bremond was founded as a cotton town but was in desperate need of manual labor to produce and gin the cotton crops. With the end of the Civil War in 1865, all slaves were freed and manual labor was in short supply throughout the south.

Meanwhile, in another town south of Bremond called Old Waverley (Walker County), the Waverley Emigration Society was founded on September 19, 1866 to actively recruit European laborers to work the cotton plantations. The organization meeting was held in a general store owned by James Meyer Levy. The following year (1867), Levy went back to Poland and visited the villages of Exin (Kcynia), Slupy, Smogulec, Szubin, and surrounding areas.