Marion

Marion is on Farm Road 78 eleven miles west of Seguin in western Guadalupe County. It was named in honor of Marion Dove, whose grandfather, Joshua W. Young, owned a plantation that the Galveston, Harrisburg and San Antonio Railway passed through in 1877. Before the townsite was laid out, the area was a camp for railroad workers. Town lots were auctioned off in June 1877, and German settlers moved to the area from a settlement on Santa Clara Creek. By the mid-1880s Marion had steam, grist, and saw mills, two cotton gins, four general stores, a church, a district school, and 250 residents. The town was incorporated by 1941, when it had 373 residents and twenty businesses. In 1988 its population was estimated at 835, and the number of businesses had risen to twenty-eight. In 1990 the population of Marion was 984. The population grew to 1,099 in 2000.