GATESVILLE — Jim Mayberry was a slave when he lived in Virginia. He left there and arrived in Coryell County, where he remained a slave.

Soon after the end of the Civil War, Mayberry was given an opportunity to buy the land he had worked for so long near Moccasin Bend on the Leon River. The town that grew from that transaction was Lincolnville; it was named for Abraham Lincoln. Lincolnville lasted from the 1860s well into the 20th Century, but the town is long gone now.

If you knew where to look you might find a foundation in the middle of a hogpen on Moccasin Bend Road, or you might see, from the same road, a house built by a descendant of a Lincolnville family.

Otherwise, the community exists mostly in the memories and stories passed down through the generations by a few people who have ties to Lincolnville.

The search for Lincolnville might end there if not for a project by Rebecca Sharpless at the Oral History Department at Baylor University and an exhibit at the Coryell County Museum in Gatesville.