Abbott, Texas

Everything Abbott is known for

93 songs mention this city 1 artist from here

Music in Abbott

Songs About Abbott

Willie's Guitar
Shane Smith & the Saints
50%
"Willie's guitar"
Willie Nelson
Clutch
50%
"Willie Nelson"
My Best Friend
Lukas Nelson
45%
"My best friend"
Red Headed Stranger
Wade Bowen
40%
"Red headed stranger"
Don't Touch My Willie
Kevin Fowler
35%
"Don't touch my Willie"
Raisin’ Cane In Texas
Gene Watson
8%
"She's probably out with Willie's band"
Soul Train
Charlie Marie
8%
"Honky-tonks, Waylon and Willie"
Sing ’Til I Stop Crying
Pat Green
8%
"Willie would you CALL Miss Emmy Lou"
Life Ain’t Fair and the World Is Mean
Sturgill Simpson
8%
"Daddy was a Highwayman"
Wing and a Feather
Gwen Sebastian
8%
"If Willie don't need weed"
Old Wore Out Cowboys
Ward Davis
8%
"(Willie Nelson)"
President Song
Cross Canadian Ragweed
8%
"If you don't like Willie Nelson, you gotta go to prison"
What Would Willie Do?
Bruce Robison
8%
"What would Willie do?"
Weed with Willie
Toby Keith
8%
"I'll never smoke Weed with Willie again!"
Weak
Preston Cooper
8%
"when Willie sings it"
We Ain't The Only Ones
Randy Rogers & Wade Bowen
8%
"Willie's still playing shows like he was 19"
Son Of The Dirty South
Brantley Gilbert
7%
"Willie smokin'"
One To Willie
Riley Green
7%
"But on a scale of one to Willie"
Where There’s a Willie
Jack Ingram
7%
"Here's to Willie"
Like Me
Chely Wright
7%
"While listening to Willie, Dylan and Pride"

Showing top 20 of 93 songs

Artists From Abbott

W
Willie Nelson
country

Rivers & Roads in Song near Abbott

Songs written about the waterways and highways that run near Abbott.

Interstate 35 43 songs Brazos River 42 songs Chisholm Trail 8 songs Interstate 45 8 songs

Musical Heritage

Bobbie Nelson RoadyGoat

Before Willie Nelson was Willie Nelson, there was his big sister Bobbie at the piano. She came out of Abbott, Texas, same as him, and for decades she was the piano in his band — Sister Bobbie, he called her. Willie always said she was the real prodigy, not him. But the road wasn't kind to her early on: she once lost custody of her sons, in part because a woman playing music wasn't seen as a respectable way to make a living. She outlasted every bit of it. She was in Nashville for the birth of outlaw country, she wrote a memoir alongside her brother, and when she passed in 2022, she left one more record behind — "Loving You," made with Amanda Shires, released after she was gone. The backbone of the whole band, and she never once had to raise her voice.

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Willie Buys Back His Church RoadyGoat

The Abbott Methodist church where Willie and Bobbie Nelson grew up eventually lost its congregation, which merged into the Methodist church in Hillsboro, and the white church building went up for sale. It might have been torn down, or moved off to become a wedding chapel or a steakhouse. Willie's classmate from the Abbott class of nineteen fifty, Donald Reed, called to warn him. The asking price was seventy two thousand dollars, and Willie told him: see if they'll take two thousand five hundred more than they're asking. After he bought it in July of two thousand six, the church reopened with an old fashioned Sunday gospel singing. Bobbie played a seven foot Steinway, Leon Russell played chords in a corner, and Willie told the packed crowd that he and Sister Bobbie had been going to this church ever since they were born, and that now they were all members of the Abbott Methodist Church. During Amazing Grace, a Katy freight train whistled by.

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The Cadillac in the Cotton Field RoadyGoat

Willie Nelson has told a story about how his music career really started, and it happened right along here. When he was a boy, he was picking cotton on a farm by the highway that ran between Abbott and Hillsboro. It was about a hundred degrees in the hot Texas sun, and he was dragging a sack of cotton down the row, when a Cadillac came by with its windows rolled up. In his words, there was something about that scene that made him start thinking more about playing a guitar.

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The Crosswalk the Government Protected RoadyGoat

Abbott sounds like abbey, and the most famous road with abbey in its name runs through northwest London. By the nineteen sixties, Abbey Road was home to the recording studios where the Beatles worked, and on the eighth of August, nineteen sixty nine, the four of them walked across the zebra crossing outside for the cover of the album they named after the street. The idea came from a Paul McCartney sketch of four stick men on the crossing. The photographer, Iain Macmillan, stood on a stepladder in the road while a policeman held up the traffic, and he had only a few minutes. In December of twenty ten, the British government made that plain striped crosswalk a listed heritage site, the first zebra crossing ever listed. As the heritage minister put it, it's no castle or cathedral, but thanks to the Beatles it has just as strong a claim to be part of the nation's heritage.

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Trigger RoadyGoat

Abbott's most famous native, Willie Nelson, got his most famous guitar in nineteen sixty nine. The story goes that he'd laid his old Baldwin guitar on the stage between sets at a gig, and a drunk stepped on it. A guitar repairman named Shot Jackson said it couldn't be saved, and sold him a brand new Martin nylon string guitar for seven hundred fifty dollars, a lot of money then, moving the old Baldwin's pickup into the new one. Willie named it Trigger, after Roy Rogers's horse, and the two have been inseparable ever since. Years later, when a house fire destroyed nearly everything he owned, Trigger was one of the things he saved.

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The Honky Tonker from Tokio RoadyGoat

A few miles from here, in the little community of Tokio, lived one of the last old school honky tonk singers, James Hand. He went to West High, and he later said he used to drive to school with a shotgun in his truck and nobody thought a thing about it. As a boy he'd go lie on his back in an old dry cistern in the back yard and sing Dean Martin's Houston, for the echo, dreaming he'd be a singing star someday. He worked as a horse trainer and a truck driver, and he played Central Texas dance halls for forty years before Rounder Records put out his first nationally distributed album in two thousand six, when he was fifty three. Willie Nelson called him the real deal. After he died in two thousand twenty, Charley Crockett put out a whole album of his songs and called him the greatest living country singer in the old school style, somewhere between a Hank Williams and a Willie Nelson.

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History of Abbott

Abbott, TX RoadyGoat

Abbott, Texas, has a rich history that dates back to 1871 when it was founded as a stop for the Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railroad. The city was named in honor of Joseph 'Jo' Abbott, who represented the area in the Texas House of Representatives at that time. Its population reached its peak in 1914 with 713 residents, and the city was incorporated two years later in 1916. Over the years, the population has declined, with only 352 residents recorded in the 2020 census.

Abbott, TX RoadyGoat

The city of Abbott was named after Joseph 'Jo' Abbott, who was a representative of the area in the Texas House of Representatives at the time of the city's founding in 1871.

Thoroughbreds or Scrubs RoadyGoat

On an April evening in eighteen eighty seven, a young sheepman named Frank Blocker and a friend drove their wagon up to Brigman's store here in Abbott, on their way home from Waco. Blocker said something about his thoroughbred stock. A cistern digger named Joel Williams remarked that they looked more like scrubs to him. Blocker answered, don't you like our style? Williams told him he'd better not talk that way, and as Blocker started up the store steps, Williams drew a forty five Colt and shot him dead. Blocker left a wife and a little boy. Williams rode off with a posse behind him, and the sheriff went out partly to keep him from being lynched when he was caught. His exhausted horse turned up in the Pin Oak Creek bottom. About a week later, two and a half miles north of Palestine, a deputy rode alongside a stranger for a hundred yards, got down, drew his pistol and demanded his surrender. The man shouted that he'd die first and went for his gun, and the deputy shot him dead. A merchant from Abbott who had seen the killing came to Palestine and identified the body as Joel Williams.

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Willie Nelson - Abbott, Texas (Dolly Parton on Willie)

1933

Dolly Parton reflecting on her musical chemistry with Willie Nelson.

Czech Settlers in Hill County

1870

One of the most influential and numerous national groups to settle in Hill County, Czechs came to this area from Fayette County and the province of Moravia in Austria-Hungary. Many sought greater freedom due to barriers to attaining national status in the old country, political restraints, introduction of German into the schools, and compulsory military service. Land agents painted a rosy picture of opportunities awaiting those who purchased cheap state university lands in this region. The first immigrants arrived in the 1870s and found the soil so fertile that they induced many others to join them. Building of the Texas Central and "Katy" railroads boosted immigration. "Capital" of Czech settlement in the area is Abbott, named for Jo Abbott (1840-1908), judge, legislator, and lawyer. Surrounding towns are Zee Vee (so called for the local ZV cattle brand), Penelope, and Aquilla. Neighbors admired the Czechs for their neat, well managed farms and their thrift and industry. For many years they retained a strong group spirit, speaking their own language and observing old world customs. In recent decades they have mixed more with other groups and today fill many public and professional offices as well as continue to farm. (1973)

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Abbott

1881

In 1881, on land owned by G.M. Dodge, the Missouri, Kansas & Texas (Katy) Railroad built a line through a new town named for Joseph Abbott, a Hill County resident, lawyer and U.S. Congressman. Winston W. Treadwell soon opened a general store managed by L.C. Barnett, who built and occupied the town's first residence. Ten years later, the community supported a school, several businesses, a post office and three churches. Abbott suffered major fires at the turn of the 20th century, but its residents rebuilt. Today, their history is maintained through religious and educational institutions, as well as cemeteries, which chronicle the lives of generations of area residents. (2006)

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Carr Ranch, Old

1854

In 1854 area pioneer D. C. Carr settled this ranch, which covered land in both Hill and McLennan counties. D. C. Carr and his brother J. C. had come to Texas in 1840 and were instrumental in the early growth of the nearby towns of Abbott and West. A log cabin built on the ranch served as a store, postal station, and the office of the stagecoach line that serviced the area until 1881. The historic property, which has remained in the Carr family, contains evidence of an early Indian camp and burial mound and is the site of a cave formed by the Balcones Fault.

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Dawson, Hubert McLeod

1903

Hubert McLeod Dawson, educator and civic leader, son of Emmett Beauregard and Sorintha Natalie (McLeod) Dawson, was born at Abbott, Hill County, Texas, April 24, 1903. He graduated from Abbott High School in 1918, but the school only had ten grades. Dawson went on to complete eleventh grade at Hillsboro High School and graduated in 1919. He earned his B.A. and M.S. from Baylor University in 1923 and 1956, respectively, and received an honorary LLD from the University of Mary Hardin-Baylor in 1965. In 1923 Dawson was the principal, a teacher, and a coach at Abbott High School. The following year he was a teacher and coach at Moody High School; in 1926 he left to serve as chairman of the modern language department at Meridian College. From 1927 to 1928 he was involved in graduate study at Southern Methodist University. In 1928 he was a language teacher at Temple High School and Temple Junior College as well as acting registrar at the college. In 1942 he entered the Air Corps, United States Army, as a private and was discharged as a captain. He served in the Military Intelligence Service for thirty-four months in the European theater of operations, in London, England; Paris, France; and Offenbach, Germany. Dawson returned to the United States and Temple Junior College as the associate dean and director of guidance in 1946; he became associate dean and registrar the following year. In 1953 he served as dean-registrar until he became president of the institution in 1959. He served in this capacity until 1973 when he retired and was made president emeritus. During Dawson's service to Temple Junior College, he was chiefly responsible for moving the college from four basement rooms in the old Temple High School to its own building on a thirty-two-acre campus in south Temple in 1957. Through his efforts this campus grew to include a total of 100 acres. He was largely instrumental in the separation of the college from the Temple public schools and the construction of nine modern buildings to house Temple Junior College. During his tenure of service the enrollment of the college increased from 82 to 1,250. Dawson belonged to numerous professional, civic, and social organizations. He was a life member of the Texas State Teachers Association . He served as president of the Texas Junior College Teachers Association and the Association of Texas Colleges and Universities . No other individual has served as president of both these organizations. Dawson also served as president of the Lone Star Chapter of the American Association of Teachers of Spanish, the Texas Junior College Speech Association, the Temple Public Schools Unit of the Texas State Teachers Association, and the Temple Kiwanis Club. He was a member of the First United Methodist Church of Temple, Texas, where he served as a member of the administrative board, the finance committee, and as teacher of an adult Sunday School class. He died in Temple on April 20, 1995, and was buried in Ridge Park Cemetery in Hillsboro, Texas.

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Things to Do in Abbott

food 6.0 mi away
The Czech Stop

In 1983 Bill Polk opened a little convenience store off I-35 in West Texas and started selling kolaches he bought from a nearby bakery. The pastries moved so…
food 23.8 mi away
Magnolia Market at the Silos

Chip and Joanna Gaines' Fixer Upper empire. Shopping food trucks and shiplap everything.
food 6.1 mi away
Slovacek's West

I-35 exit 353 in West, Texas — the rival Czech bakery to the Czech Stop across the highway. Over 35 kolache varieties, in-house smoked meats, and a full deli…
historical 23.5 mi away
Waco, Texas - 1953 Tornado Aftermath

Everything Near Abbott

392 stories, landmarks & places within ~20 miles — the nearest 200 are listed here — the same local lore RoadyGoat plays as you drive through.

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