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September / October 2009
Volume 21, Number 5

History of a Texas County

Nacogdoches County Served as Gateway to Texas

Nacogdoches County, in the center of the pine belt of East Texas, is bounded on the west and south by the Angelina River and on the east by Attoyac Bayou. The county seat and largest town is Nacogdoches. The chief natural resource is pine, and lumbering is among the main industries. The first commercial oilfield in the state was located in the county, and shallow wells continue to have small production.

After the cession of Louisiana to Spain in 1763, the settlers in the area were ordered to move back to the San Antonio or the Rio Grande communities, but led by Antonio Gil Ibarvo they petitioned to return to their former homes. In 1779, Ibarvo rebuilt the town of Nacogdoches. The same year Ibarvo probably began construction of a stone house and trading post now known as the Old Stone Fort. Ibarvo also began making informal land grants to the early settlers. Most of the grants were in the area of present Nacogdoches County, but others were in the area that became Cherokee, Sabine, and San Augustine counties. In 1792 Juan Antonio Cortez, a military official, was sent to regularize the land grants, but only a few formal land grants were issued. As a result, most of the grants in the area remained imperfect, a situation that fostered controversy when Anglo-Americans began arriving in the region in the 1820s and 1830s.

Because of the heavily-wooded countryside and its distance from other Spanish settlements, the Nacogdoches colony found it difficult to attract Spanish settlers who preferred land more easily adaptable to ranching. The main attractions remained its relative freedom from Spanish authorities and the potential of profits to be made from smuggling. Although the town had appointed officials, it was unique among Spanish colonial towns of northern Mexico, for it was never formally designated as a pueblo or presidio.

By 1800 Nacogdoches, with 660 inhabitants, was the second largest settlement in the province of Texas.

During the Mexican War of Independence Nacogdoches was also the target of a filibustering expedition led by Augustus W. Magee and José Bernardo Gutiérrez de Lara. Accompanied by a force of Mexican revolutionaries and Anglos from Louisiana, the Gutiérrez- Magee expedition seized control of Nacogdoches on August 12, 1812. But in August of the following year a royalist force led by Joaquín de Arredondo crushed the revolt. Nacogdoches became the scene of a bloody purge, during which royal authority was reestablished through execution and confiscation. Most of the residents of the town and surrounding countryside fled across the Sabine River into Louisiana, and by 1818 the area was virtually deserted.

In July 1821, when Stephen F. Austin passed through the town, he described it as a ruin of a village, consisting of a church, the stone house, and six other dwellings. But within a few years the town’s fortunes began to revive. Located on one of the principal routes of immigration from the United States, Nacogdoches developed into a leading entryway for Anglo immigrants, earning the title “Gateway to Texas.”

Following the passage of the Mexican Colonization Law of 1825 by the state of Coahuila and Texas, two empresario grants were given in the area surrounding Nacogdoches, one to Frost Thorn, a former associate of the trading company of Barr and Davenport, and the other to Haden Edwards, a native of Virginia. Edwards’s challenge of the validity of many of the previous Spanish and Mexican land titles alienated many of the older settlers of the region. In 1826, in an effort to assert their claims, Edwards’s brother, Benjamin W. Edwards, and some thirty followers rode into Nacogdoches, seized the Old Stone Fort, and declared the independence of Texas. The revolt, which became known as the Fredonian Rebellion, was quickly suppressed by Mexican militia, and the Edwards brothers and the others were forced to flee.

The incident, however, did little to stem the tide of Anglo- Americans flooding into the area. Among the main concerns of the Mexican government officials was the illegal entry of foreigners. But José de las Piedras, the military official charged with enforcing the law, found that he could do little more than ensuring that illegal immigrants not enter Nacogdoches itself. Growing dissatisfaction with the immigration laws and the problem of securing land titles spawned another revolt of the Mexican and Anglo-American populace of the region, culminating in the victory of the antigovernment forces in the battle of Nacogdoches in 1832. Piedras and the other Mexican officials were forced to withdraw.

Immediately after the Texas Revolution the municipalities within the Nacogdoches Department, Liberty, Jefferson, Jasper, Sabine, San Augustine, and Shelby, were established as counties of the Republic of Texas. The remaining area east of the Trinity River was designated Nacogdoches County on March 17, 1836. In April 1846 the county was further subdivided into what would eventually become all or part of twenty other counties: Anderson, Angelina, Camp, Cherokee, Dallas, Delta, Gregg, Henderson, Hopkins, Houston, Hunt, Kaufman, Raines, Rockwall, Rusk, Smith, Trinity, Upshur, Van Zandt and Wood.

The information above is excerpted from the Handbook of Texas, an encyclopedia
published by the Texas State Historical Association. The Handbook
can be accessed online at www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/online. Copies of the
two-volume set may be obtained by contacting the TSHA at (512) 232-1513.