Ledbetter lies in the northern part of the county on the Houston & Texas Central about one mile north of Cummings Creek on the watershed between the Colorado and Brazos Rivers. The surrounding country is post oak. In its neighborhood are gravel pits and rock quarries the rock of which was used for the construction of the Galveston jetties.

To the traveler, coming from La Grange, Ledbetter presents a pretty appearance. A small prairie in front of it, forming a lawn for the town. The pretty red-roofed residences are pleasantly set off by the green of the post oak.

The town has a Union Church, in which Rev. B. W. Allen of Giddings preaches to a Methodist and Rev. Coupland of Rockdale preaches to a Presbyterian congregation. The Baptists also own a church building. Rev. F. H. Morgan is the preacher of their church.

The town is incorporated for school purposes. The principal of the school for this year will be Prof. Saunders, who formerly taught at Walhalla.

Ledbetter is a post office and a voting precinct of the county. It consists of four general merchandise stores, two lumber yards, two drugstores, two saloons, one blacksmith shop. There are two resident physicians in the town. While in Ledbetter, the writer became acquainted with T. M. Vernon, the leading druggist in Ledbetter, Wm. Kruse, a popular merchant of that place and he was also patronized by his friend L. C. Rummel, the efficient and successful manager of the Ledbetter Co-operative Lumber Association, an association of substantial farmers who invested their surplus capital in this lumber business. It was organized in 1888. The officers of the company are J. C. Speckels, president, B. E. Siegmund, secretary, and W. B. Barnes, Wm. Peters, Fritz Knoche, Paul Schuhmann and J. H. Rushing directors.

The population of the town and neighborhood is American, German and Wendish. Amongst the oldest settlers of the town may be mentioned J. C. Hillmann, L. C. Rummel and E. Albers; of the neighborhood, John Rost, Geo. Eschenberg, Friedrich Mueller, Fritz Rethke, ____ Tabken, and ____ Kruse.

Ledbetter, in Northwestern Fayette County on the Texas and New Orleans Railroad, was named for a pioneer family. In 1870 Ledbetter was the first town in Fayette County to have a railroad; it drew business from areas as far away as Warrenton, Walhalla, and Round Top, but the golden era was short-lived, for when La Grange became a railroad center, the profitable freight business declined.

One of Ledbetter's most lasting industries has been the excavating and shipping of gravel. An average of 100,000 cubic yards has been shipped annually from the local pits in the past fifty years. The area has furnished gravel for many of the state's highways and for the building of the Galveston jetties. Cotton has been replaced by poultry as the chief agricultural industry.