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Chapter V: A History of Jefferson County, Texas Mexico and the Anglo-American Pioneers By W. T. Block Following the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, Spain quickly renewed its interest in East Texas and dispatched troops to reoccupy four key points, one of which was El Atascosita on the lower Trinity River.1 From this beginning, the “distrito de Atascosita,” of which Jefferson County was a part,2 gradually evolved with the following boundaries: The Atascosita District bounded…on the West by the Colony of San Felipe de Austin, on the North by the District of Nacogdoches, on the East by the reserved lands on the Sabine, on the South by the Gulf of Mexico, including all Islands and Bays within three leagues of Sea Shore.3 By 1805, Spain faced a multitude of prospective immigrants to East Texas. These included Spanish, French, Indians, and Anglo-Americans of Louisiana, who sought to escape the sovereignty of the United States. Many Anglo-Americans were adventurers or fleeing from justice. Some Louisiana tribes feared the American Indian policy and expected better treatment at the hands of the Spanish. Spanish officials developed a plan whereby the applicants of European derivation were to be resettled in the interior of Texas,4 while a buffer zone of reserved lands along the coast and between the Trinity and Sabine Rivers was to be populated by Indian refugees considered to be hostile to the United States.5 After Spain’s eviction from Texas, the principle of a reserved buffer zone was continued by Mexico. The problems experienced by Spain’s successor in the Atascosita District are depicted in the following quote: While the French activities were temporary, the Anglo-Americans were not. After Texas became a part of Mexico in 1821 and opened the area legally to colonists, settlers poured in by the hundreds. Since the region was so far removed from the capitols at San Antonio and Saltillo and the Mexican administration moved so slowly in all matters, the frontiersmen, in their typical impulsive fashion, moved onto the land and worried later about legalities of title. This proved to cause considerable trouble in the Atascosita District...6 Between 1821 and 1836, Mexico’s policy toward Anglo-American immigration to Texas vacillated between acceptance and open hostility, tempered by the chaos of contending political factions and the fear of American encroachment. Its positive side is observed in the colonization law of 1824 that permitted Stephen F. Austin and other impresarios to secure land grants in Texas.7 Its negative side is seen in the decree of 1830, which was designed to curtail Anglo-American immigration, and the efforts to suppress civil liberties in Texas in 1835-1836. Additional factors were the large numbers of hostile Comanches who raided at will throughout the province and the failure of efforts to colonize Mexicans in Texas.8 Settlement in the Atascosita District, much of which lay within the reserved zone, was regulated by the Colonization Laws of 1824 and 1825 (later amended by the decree of April 6, 1830). Article 4 of the 1824 colonization act provided that “there cannot be colonized any lands, comprehended within twenty leagues [approximately sixty miles] of the limits of any foreign nation, nor within ten leagues of the coasts, without the previous approbation of the general supreme executive power.”9 Article 7 of the same law provided that “until after the year 1 840, the general congress shall prohibit the entrance of any foreigner as a colonist, unless imperious circumstances shall require it, with respect to the individuals of a particular nation.”10 The Coahuila-Texas State Colonization Law of 1825 continued the proscription of settlement in much of the Atascosita District and in all of the Jefferson County area.11 For that reason, squatters in the forbidden zone could not apply for land titles until the reserved lands were granted to the impresario Lorenzo de Zavala in 1829.12 Because of the disproportionate ratio of Americans to Mexicans in East Texas, the Law of 1830 was designed to curtail the immigration of Americans to Texas and to replace them with Mexican and European colonists.13 However, the Mexican commandant of the Eastern Provinces, General Mier y Teran, feared the result of a total ban on American immigration, and gradually, an interpretation prevailed that the ban did not apply to the colonies of Stephen F. Austin and Green Dewitt. Eventually, the ban was not enforced, and General Mier y Teran suggested that Austin incorporate the squatters of Atascosita District into the San Felipe colony, adding “it is all the same to me whether you bring a family from Tennessee or the Sabine.”14 In 1826, the alcaldes of Atascosita District, George Orr and Henry Munson, were already aware of the advantages of incorporation into either the Department of San Felipe or Nacogdoches. On September 10, 1826, an election was held, and, by a vote of thirty-seven to twenty-one, Atascosita citizens chose union with Stephen F. Austin’s colony rather than with Nacogdoches.15 On September 28, a letter,16 the results of the ballot, and a census, which listed 331 free citizens and seventy-six slaves in the Atascosita District, were, forwarded to San Felipe for Austin’s consideration.17 Although consolidation was not possible under the Colonization Acts of 1824 and 1825 without the special permission of the Mexican congress, it is interesting to note that, apparently, Austin considered the suggestion for some time. For one thing, he knew very little about the remote Southeast Texas sector, and, in 1827, sent John A. Williams to reconnoiter the area. Williams began at the San Antonio Road, traveled down Attoyac Bayou, the Angelina-Neches watercourses, and Sabine Lake, and stopped intermittently to take astronomical bearings. With the assistance of George Orr, the Atascosita alcalde who knew the region thoroughly, Williams prepared a rough map of the Atascosita District, and sent it to James E. B. Austin, along with his letter of October 14, 1827.18 After the impresario Lorenzo de Zavala acquired the border and coastal reserves as a land grant, Atascosita was absorbed into the Department of Nacogdoches in 1831 as the Municipality of Liberty.19 In 1826, the only family living in present-day Jefferson County is listed in the Atascosita census, along with the names of others who moved to Jefferson County before its separation from Liberty County. In 1824, Noah and Nancy Tevis and five of their children settled at Beaumont (known then as Tevis Bluff), where a sixth child 20 was born soon afterward.21 In 1833, James and Elizabeth McFaddin moved to Beaumont, having resided near Liberty for the previous ten years.22 John and Sarah McGaffey, who formerly lived in the hamlet of Jefferson, on Cow Bayou in present-day Orange County, became the first settlers at Sabine Pass in 1832.23 Ten or twelve families who lived between Jefferson and the Sabine River were omitted from the census.24 In January 1826, before the census was taken, John McGaffey had visited with Stephen F. Austin at the home of John Castleman on the Colorado River. According to his petition that follows, McGaffey felt that the influx of settlers using the lower Atascosita trail to the Trinity River was sufficient to warrant a ferry over the Neches River in south Jefferson County, but there is no record that McGaffey request was ever granted: River Niege25 (Neches), January 10, 1826 To The Honorable The Authorities…of Texas Your petitioner has with great pains…partially established a ferry to cross the River Niege on the Teskasito [sic] Road leading to Trinity… Your petitioner…solicits…a right to these marshes…to make good roads on the East side leading to and from the banks of the said River Niege… As compensation…your petitioner respectfully solicits a right to a league of land convenient and adjacent to the ferry for the Maintenance and Support of himself and family. John McGaffey26 One of the earliest rumblings of impending revolt occurred in the Atascosita District in 1831, following the stationing of 150 Mexican soldiers under Colonel John Bradburn at Anahuac.27 The affair began when Bradburn arrested Francisco Madero, the commissioner of land titles,28 but it mushroomed when because of Bradburn’s despotic conduct, William B. Travis and two others were imprisoned. The Ayuntamiento of Liberty was dissolved, causing its members to flee to Austin’s colony. A small citizen army rose in protest and was soon joined by units from the San Felipe and Nacogdoches departments. Colonel Jose Piedras of Nacogdoches marched a force to the relief of Bradburn, but, upon determining that the colonists’ complaints were justified, Piedras relieved Bradburn of his command.29 The issuance of land titles in Jefferson County was to emanate in Nacogdoches, where, on April 15, 1825, impresario Haden Edwards was granted a contract to settle 800 families.30 Using arbitrary methods, Edwards charged a higher price for land than was permitted and threatened to evict title holders unless they paid the difference in price. When a flood of protests resulted, Edwards’ contract was cancelled on October 2, 1826, and the abortive Fredonian Rebellion resulted, with the principal conspirators escaping to Louisiana. 31 Apart of Edwards’ grant was reissued in 1826 to David G. Eurnet and Joseph Vehlein of Mexico City, and the remainder, which included the twenty-league border reserve eastward to the Sabine River and all of the Atascosita District, was granted to Lorenzo de Zavala on March 12, 1829.32 Since they lacked the funds to develop their large grants, Burnet, Vehlein, and Zavala entered into an agreement with the Galveston Bay and Texas Land Company of New York, which issued scrip at ten cents per acre, the purchase of which was regarded as equivalent to a land title.33 The land company soon encountered difficulties with General Mier y Teran who refused to recognize it as the impresarios’ agent.34 Eventually, the problem was resolved, and, by 1834, the company was established at Nacogdoches, where Major George A.

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