| A village which
is situated in the northwest section of
Lamar County, and was named after the Cothran
family of early settlers, has been known by
at least three names - Cothran's Store,
Cothran's Station, and as written on an envelope
by my great-great grandfather T.A. Moore,
as Cothranville. During the time that T.A.'s
father James U. Moore lived in or near this
town, it was a rather wild place on the
edge of the country where hog and cattle stealing
were pretty prominent, and where many a
saloon flourished. T.A., (in letters to
his father) expressed his concern about
traveling to this area with his wife and
family.
 The town seems to have been
first called Cothran's Store, named after
John J. Cothran, an early settler who had
built a store and died in 1884. Near
Cothran's store was a gin and
blacksmith, but a post office had yet to be
established so when anyone from the area
went to nearby Paris they would pick up the mail
for those living near this area and deposit
it in a box kept at the gin for this
purpose. Each man would then go
through the box and take out his mail.
Some say the name
changed from Cothran's Store when Henry
Miller's father set up a saloon a few miles south
of the store, it was about the same time the
circus had begun showing in Paris, and
Henry got himself a fancy poster of a handsome
tiger and pasted it above the rear door
inside his saloon. And when the the Masonic lodge
or some other organization was gathering and
wanted to take a snifter, they'd suggest
that they "Go over and take a shot at
the tiger." Others claim the
name Tigertown simply got the name because
of of the drunks who rode into town when
the store buildings were plastered with the
pictures of the circus tigers and had gone
down Main Street yelling "Tigertown!"
Still others claim the name began on
account of a rivalry at a local dance when local
boys had a fight with the boys from Bonham
and that the Bonham boys had returned and
painted a tiger on the wall suggesting the
fierceness of the fight.
However it is that
Cothran's Store, Cothran's Station, or
Cothranville came to be known as Tigertown, it
remains fact that it took me nearly three years
to track down this particular little town.
As a genealogist attempting to piece together
information, the envelope written by my
great-great grandfather to his father with this
address, had given me every reason to believe a
town or village by this name had indeed
existed in Lamar county.
Upon the envelope
T.A. had written: "They laid him in the
village church yard, and I can write to him
no more." This was the bit of information
which ultimately led me to Roberta Woods,
one of those who had recorded the Lamar County
cemeteries.
The Tigertown
Cemetery was recorded in November 1991 and is
located on Highway 38 in the northwest
quadrant of the county. The oldest
inscribed grave is that of Rodie Cothran
who died in 1862, but it also containes 568
graves including unknowns - one which might very
well be the resting place of James U.
Moore.
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