Water Rails & Oil - Historic Mid & South Jefferson County

clashes in 1832 in Anahuac, Velasco, and
Nacogdoches, conventions in 1832 and 1833 to
request separate statehood, further fighting at
Gonzales in October and San Antonio in
December 1835, and a declaration of
independence and the massacre at the Alamo in
March 1836. The Battle of San Jacinto, fought
seven weeks later on April 21, resulted in the
capture of Santa Anna and the establishment of
the Republic of Texas under interim President
David G. Burnett.
In one of its first actions, the Republic’s
Congress created county government. Jefferson
County was authorized in 1836 and organized a
year later on December 21. The original
boundaries of the county included all of
present-day Orange County on the east, the
southern part of Hardin County on the north,
the eastern portion of Chambers County in the
west, and the shoreline of the Gulf of Mexico in
the south. Old Jefferson hosted the county seat
for one year, but Beaumont received that
assignment in 1838.
Early settlers harvested timber and milled it in
the county’s first industrial development. Farmers
did not find the soils of Jefferson County suitable
for the culture of cotton, so stock raising, and later
rice production, became the primary agricultural
focus, and manufacturing leather goods and
building ships added to the industrial base.
NEW
SETTLEMENTS
Clusters of settlers began to gather throughout
southern Jefferson County. These communities
hosted businesses and professional services that
supplied the existing population and attracted
more. The community known as Port Neches,
originally known as Grigsby’s Bluff and located on
the Neches River approximately ten miles south of
Beaumont, occupied a site originally used by the
Attacapa as a village. Thomas F. McKinney had
intended to establish a community there in the
1830s that he planned to name Georgia, but
instead he transferred the property to Joseph
Grigsby in 1837. Grigsby developed the river
landing into a port facility for Neches River traffic.
A gristmill and sawmill represented antebellum
industrial development, a foreshadow of the
heavy concentration of oil refineries and chemical
plants that came to dominate southern Jefferson
County in the twentieth century. Grigsby’s Bluff,
or Port Neches, hosted a Confederate military
installation to guard against Union invasion via
the Neches River during the Civil War. Grigsby’s
Bluff served as Confederate Fort Grigsby after the
defenses of Sabine Pass were abandoned.
Other settlers developed a community near
the mouth of the Sabine River to take advantage
of direct access to the Gulf of Mexico. John Bevil
attempted to develop what he called the
❖
Jefferson County ranchers periodically
drove vast cattle herds through the
marsh and bayous to the Gulf of
Mexico to swim in the waters along
the shore to “debug” them before they
were driven to market. Note that
cowboys used trained horses to lead
the cattle.
COURTESY OF THE MUSEUM OF THE GULF COAST,
PORT ARTHUR, TEXAS.
Chapter I ✦ 9