Water Rails & Oil - Historic Mid & South Jefferson County

that conflict drew business and population from
the area. Significant hurricane damage in 1886
resulted in the complete demise of Aurora and
the Sparks’ settlement.
Meanwhile, William McFaddin, C.C.
Caswell, O. M. Kyle, Valentine Wiess, William
Wiess, and Samuel Lee organized the Beaumont
Cattle Company with McFaddin as manager.
The company acquired over 40,000 acres of
Jefferson County near its southern and western
boundary along the Gulf of Mexico and
established one of Texas’ largest cattle raising
operations at that time. McFaddin interests
continue to raise cattle in this coastal area in the
twenty-first century.
THE CIVIL WAR
Jefferson County, Texas, hosted one of the
most significant battles of the Civil War fought
in the Trans-Mississippi Department, or west of
the great river, at Sabine Pass.
Modern Texans who look back at the Republic
of Texas nostalgically may not remember just how
eager the majority of its citizens were to join the
Union of the United States and turn over
problems with Mexico, Indians, and poor finances
to an existing government. They may be more
familiar with the efforts of those Texans and others
who had joined them—primarily from the
South—after little more than a decade to leave
that Union and join a new southern Confederacy.
Texans generally favored secession by a three to
one margin, but the vote in Jefferson County was
even more enthusiastic, 256 in favor and only
fifteen opposed.
Because Sabine Pass could control access to
Beaumont and other settlements in the area from
the Gulf of Mexico, Jefferson County
and state officials decided to locate Fort
Griffin there. It consisted of an earthwork with
six cannons to guard the pass. The Davis Guard,
or Company F, First Texas Heavy Artillery
Regiment, commanded by Captain Frederick
Odlum, garrisoned the installation. They marked
the channel with stakes and locked their guns on
the distance between the markers.
Early in the war United States President
Abraham Lincoln proclaimed a blockade of
the Confederate coast from the Potomac River on
the Atlantic Ocean to Brownsville on
the Gulf of Mexico. Union naval and military
operations succeeded also in capturing New
Orleans and Galveston by mid-1862, though
Confederates reclaimed the latter city in January
1863. Meantime, General Nathaniel Prentiss
Banks, commanding in New Orleans, decided
to send a force of four thousand troops aboard the
Clifton, the Arizona, the Sachem, and the Granite
City through Sabine Pass and up the river to
capture the rail connection eastward from
Houston, and thus penetrate the interior of Texas.
The Union flotilla approached Sabine Pass on
September 8, 1863. With the Davis Guard alert to
the danger, Navy Commander Lieutenant
Frederick Crocker had no hope of surprising
them, so, at mid-afternoon, his vessels approached
the Pass in a direct line. The forty-seven men
commanded by Lieutenant Dick Dowling, opened
fire when the lead vessel, the Clifton, came into
range in the marked field of fire. The recoil of one
cannon took it off its carriage, but the remaining
five weapons fired 107 shots at the Union vessels
in a little over thirty minutes. A shot exploded the
steam boiler of the Sachem, leaving her without
power and blocking the channel. The Arizona
withdrew, but the Clifton attempted to steam up
the pass until a shot destroyed control of the ship’s
rudder, and it ran aground and further blocked the
channel. This caused the Granite City to join the
Arizona in withdrawing to New Orleans with the
remainder of Banks’ invading army.
❖
A painting of Dick Dowling wearing
the Davis Medal awarded to each of
the 47 Davis Guard for their heroics
in defeating 1,200 Union invaders on
September 8, 1963, in the Battle of
Sabine Pass. The medals were
authorized by Jefferson Davis,
president of the Confederacy. A
women’s group, the Southern
Dramatic Association of Houston,
supported the project by raising
$1,700 to finance the making of the
medals by a jeweler in Houston,
Charles Gottchalk. The front of the
medals featured “D.G.” indicating
Davis Guard, and a Maltese Cross.
COURTESY OF THE MUSEUM OF THE GULF COAST,
PORT ARTHUR, TEXAS.
Chapter I ✦ 11