The Person
Findagrave has a biography of Mr. Rhome, originally from the now-defunct 'Texans in the Civil War' site:
The son of Peter G. and Nancy Almira Crandall Rhome, was born November 22, 1837 in Richmond County, Georgia.
Byron enlisted in the 18th Texas Infantry, Company K from Jacksonville, Cherokee Co, Texas in July of 1862. He served in General Walker's Division in the Trans Mississippi Department spending the war years in Louisiana and Arkansas. Byron participated in the battles of Opelousas, Mansfield and Pleasant Hill, Louisiana, and the battle of Jenkin's Ferry in Arkansas. He began his service in the 18th Texas Infantry as a First Sergeant. He was later elected 2nd Lieutenant and then promoted to 1st Lieutenant. Apparently he was wounded at the battle of Opelousas but he continued in active service until the 18th disbanded at Hempstead, Texas in May of 1865.
Byron Crandall Rhome and Ella Elizabeth Loftin were married in Cherokee County, August 31, 1864. Sometime after 1876, Byron moved to Wise County. He convinced the Ft.Worth-Denver Railroad to come through the little town which eventually became Rhome, Texas. His ranch in Wise County was called Hereford Park. He was one of the first ranchers to be able to keep his Hereford bull alive for longer than a few weeks in the tick infested Texas ranch lands. He became well known across the state and the country for his prize Hereford bulls. His prize bull, Harkaway, was the first Hereford to win the Grand Champion Blue Ribbon at the Texas State Fair in 1880. B.C. helped found the Fort Worth Livestock Show and Cattle Yards. He won numerous awards for his Herefords and was also a judge at stock shows across Texas and the country. Byron was prominent in the Democratic Party and was asked on several occasions to run for governor. He always declined saying he just didn't have the time for that sort of thing. He and several members of his family are buried in Oakwood Cemetery, an old historical cemetery in Fort Worth, Section 28, Lot 6, S5, with a number of other prominent Fort Worth and Texas founders.
The Place
The Handbook of Texas Online has an excellent history of Rhome, also used by the City of Rhome on their website:
Rhome is on U.S. Highway 287/81 twelve miles southeast of Decatur in southeastern Wise County. A community known as Prairie Point, located at the crossroads of two stagecoach lines near the site of present Rhome, was established in the late 1850s by a group of Missourians. One of these new settlers, Samuel Sheets, owned land near the crossroads and in 1858 began to lay out and sell town lots. In the same year a post office opened, and by the early 1860s Prairie Point, with a hotel, a school, and several businesses, was the second largest settlement in Wise County. During the Civil War, however, the area, defended only by a brigade of old men and boys, was left vulnerable to attacks by Indians and bandits. Also, several prominent citizens and former citizens of Prairie Point, among them the community's former physician, Dr. Alfred McCarty, were involved in the Peace Party Conspiracy of 1862 (The Great Hanging at Gainesville). After several midnight arrests and a trial in Decatur, five residents were hanged. By 1863 Prairie Point was virtually deserted. By 1882 the Fort Worth and Denver City Railway had laid tracks nearby, and by 1883 the new settlement was named Rhome, in honor of Col. Byron Crandall Rhome, a prominent local rancher who was credited with bringing the first Hereford cattle to Wise County. The Rhome post office was established in 1883, and by the early 1890s the town had 175 residents, a school, a church, and two flour mills. One of these mills was the first roller mill built in the county, and possibly the first in Texas. In operation by 1898, this more technologically sophisticated mill used rollers instead of stone burrs to grind wheat into flour. During the 1930s the mill, then owned by L. W. Renshaw, was paid $5,000 by General Mills for the rights to a flour brand name that Renshaw had been using for years-Gold Medal. In 1939 Highway 81 was built through Rhome, and by 1942 the town was incorporated. Between 1925 and 1980 its population level fluctuated between 400 and 600. By 1988 Rhome, by then a residential community for commuters to Fort Worth, had 634 residents served by fifteen businesses. In 1990 its population was 605. The population dropped to 551 in 2000.