Joy is an

unincorporated community An unincorporated area is a parcel of land that is not governed by a local general-purpose municipal corporation. (At p. 178.) They may be governed or serviced by an encompassing unit (such as a county) or another branch of the state (such as th ...

in southern

Clay County Clay County is the name of 18 counties in the United States. Most are named for Henry Clay, U.S. Senator and statesman: * Clay County, Alabama * Clay County, Arkansas (named for John Clayton, and originally named Clayton County) * Clay County, Fl ...

Texas Texas ( , ; or ) is the most populous U.S. state, state in the South Central United States, South Central region of the United States. It borders Louisiana to the east, Arkansas to the northeast, Oklahoma to the north, New Mexico to the we ...

, United States. According to the

Handbook of Texas The Texas State Historical Association (TSHA) is an American nonprofit educational and research organization dedicated to documenting the history of Texas. It was founded in Austin, Texas, United States, on March 2, 1897. In November 2008, the ...

, the community had a population of 100 in 2000. It is located within the

Wichita Falls metropolitan area The Wichita Falls metropolitan statistical area is a metropolitan area in North Texas that covers three counties – Archer County, Texas, Archer, Clay County, Texas, Clay, and Wichita County, Texas, Wichita. As of the United States Census, 2010, ...

History

North of the settlement, Joy Creek flows through the Joy oilfield. When a group of pioneers from Fannin County founded Joy in the early 1880s, it was known as Fanninton, Fannintown, or Fannin Town. A Methodist church was founded in 1881. Gainesville was the supply hub for the early settlers. The Red River Cattle Company fenced a sizable area after becoming interested in the surrounding grasslands. Fence-cutting was first a municipal problem before the state government criminalized it in 1884. Joy was the new name given to the village when a post office opened there in 1895 and remained in operation until the 1930s. In 1914, Joy had 23 residents, a general store, a

blacksmith A blacksmith is a metalsmith who creates objects primarily from wrought iron or steel, but sometimes from #Other metals, other metals, by forging the metal, using tools to hammer, bend, and cut (cf. tinsmith). Blacksmiths produce objects such ...

, and telephone lines. Its population increased to 37 in the ensuing decade, and reports of it were available there until the early 1940s, when it was estimated to have reached 150, including seven businesses. In 1942, oil was found in the Joy field. Joy had one business reported by the early 1960s. The village still had three churches and a cemetery in the 1980s, while the neighboring Joy field boasted fourteen wells in 1990, producing a total of 25,000,000 barrels of

crude oil Petroleum, also known as crude oil or simply oil, is a naturally occurring, yellowish-black liquid chemical mixture found in geological formations, consisting mainly of hydrocarbons. The term ''petroleum'' refers both to naturally occurring u ...

. In 1990, Joy's population was still listed at 150. By 2000, the population had fallen to 100. The population went up to 110 in 2019. On May 19, 2015, a brief EF0 tornado that caused no damage struck Joy. On May 22, 2020, an EFU tornado struck Joy. Multiple storm chasers observed this tornado but no damage was found.

Geography

Joy is located at the intersection of Farm to Market Road 173 and Texas State Highway 148, south of Henrietta, southeast of Wichita Falls, west of Bowie and north of Jacksboro in southern Clay County.

Education

Joy's first school was taught in an abandoned log house in 1881. Today, Joy is served by the Midway Independent School District.

Notable people

Irven DeVore Irven DeVore (October 7, 1934 – September 23, 2014) was an anthropologist and evolutionary biologist, and Curator of Primatology at Harvard University's Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology. He headed Harvard's Department of Anthropolo ...

anthropologist An anthropologist is a scientist engaged in the practice of anthropology. Anthropologists study aspects of humans within past and present societies. Social anthropology, cultural anthropology and philosophical anthropology study the norms, values ...

and

evolutionary biologist Evolutionary biology is the subfield of biology that studies the evolutionary processes such as natural selection, common descent, and speciation that produced the diversity of life on Earth. In the 1930s, the discipline of evolutionary biol ...

. * Lucian W. Parrish,

U.S. Representative The United States House of Representatives is a chamber of the bicameral United States Congress; it is the lower house, with the U.S. Senate being the upper house. Together, the House and Senate have the authority under Article One of th ...

who attended school in Joy.

References

{{authority control Unincorporated communities in Texas Unincorporated communities in Clay County, Texas Wichita Falls metropolitan area