From Fayette County, Her History and Her People by F. Lotto, 1902:
Winchester
Winchester is situated in the northwestern part of Fayette county on the Waco branch of the San Antonio & Aransas Pass Railroad. It is about twenty miles distant from La Grange. The fertile Colorado River bottoms close by are tributary to its business. Part of the land is fertile mesquite prairie. There is also a great deal of postoak near Winchester. The Ingram prairie and the Cunningham prairie, the latter in Bastrop county, are in its neighborhood.
The teacher of the Winchester school
is Miss Gillespie. Of lodges there are the Odd Fellows, Knights of Honor and Woodmen of the World.
The town has a Lutheran Church, Rev. A. L. Grasens, pastor; a Baptist Church, Rev. Duke, pastor; a Presbyterian Church, Rev J. W. Montgomery, pastor; and a Methodist Church, Rev. Calloway, pastor.
The town of Winchester was founded and laid off about the year 1857 by John Frame, who now lives in Falls county. It consists of seven general merchandise houses, one hotel, one butcher shop, two drugstores, two physicians, one saloon, one lumber yard, one blacksmith shop, one gin and one barbershop.
Of all the towns of Fayette county which are not incorporated Winchester does the largest business. It has become a lively town, due to the energy and business talent of her merchants, of whom Messrs. Sam F. Drake, W. A. Giles and E. Zilss may be mentioned as the most enterprising. Little & Mohler is the only saloon in the town; they are liberal and popular men and do as much business as any saloon in the county. Dr. A. F. Verderi is an old resident eminent physician of Winchester, who has effected a great many cures. [Note that all of the above purchased advertisements in Lotto's book.]
The settlement is one of the oldest in the whole county. As early as 1822 John Ingram, after whom Ingram's Prairie is named, came into that neighborhood and settled on the prairie. John C. Cunningham was another old settler of the Winchester neighborhood, but he settled in Bastrop county on the prairie named after him. The oldest settler of the Winchester neighborhood now living is A. D. Saunders. He has come there in the early forties and still remembers the last Indian raid in that neighborhood. Other prominent settlers are J. H. McCullom, Paul Haske, Dr. A. F. Verdery, G. C. Thomas, Mrs. James Young, Joseph Mohler, sr., Mrs. T. T. Parr.
The population of the settlement is largely American. Of late a great many Germans have come in. Winchester is a railroad station, postoffice and voting precinct of the county.
