Bead-Grit Green Metal Leather TB

Please drop this item in rural OR Premium Member Only caches.  Do not place it in an urban cache or abandon it at a caching event.  Transport the bug in the original plastic bag for as long as the bag lasts; the bag keeps the trackable clean and prevents tangling with other items.  Otherwise, take the travel bug anywhere you wish.  No permission is needed to leave the U.S.

Travel bug photos in the logs are appreciated.  I will re-post them here, where they can be seen by other cachers.

This is one of a series of large beads obtained from different places and converted into travel bugs.  They are named for Texas towns with interesting names or histories.

Grit is near Honey Creek, six miles northwest of Mason in central Mason County. The area was settled around 1889 by cotton growers. Residents wanted to name the community after Maj. Gen. Frederick Funston of Spanish-American War fame, but had to change their minds when the post office was established, since there was already a Funston, Texas.  The community was then named Grit, probably because of the area's gritty soil.  

The post office was established in 1901.  The town once had stores, a cotton gin and a blacksmith shop.  In its early years, Grit was served by the Honey Creek school and church. The first Grit school was built in 1908, and a Baptist church was organized soon thereafter.  The church met in the Grit school building until 1924, when a large tabernacle was built.  

Grit's population was reported as thirty from the mid-1920s until 1968, when it was sixty-three.  It continued to be reported at that level into the mid-1980s, but had dropped to thirty again by 1990 and remained at that number in 2000.  As of 1976 Grit consisted of a store, a post office, a community building, and scattered dwellings.  The post office was lost by 1980.