Antebellum Jefferson, Texas: Everyday Life in an East Texas Town

1. Background

9 The area in which Jefferson came to be founded was once part of New Spain and from 1821 part of Mexico until the Republic of Texas was established in 1836. Although there was early Spanish settlement to the south in Nacogdoches, there was never a hint of Spanish influence in the Jefferson area. Although Jefferson came into existence before Texas entered the Union, it cannot be characterized as a Republic of Texas settlement. While the town was emerging in early 1845, Texas was well on its way to entering the Union, with annexation approved by the U.S. Congress in March 1845 and Texas formally admitted as a state in December. Jefferson was an American settlement whose origins were coterminus with the achievement of statehood by Texas. As a matter of coincidence, the first steamboat reached the emerging town during the same month that annexation was approved. When the Louisiana Purchase took place in 1803, the western boundary between the United States and New Spain was uncertain. The 1819 Adams-Onis treaty established part of the boundary as a line running north to the Red River from the point at which the 33rd degree of longitude struck the Sabine River. Although this line was correctly run by William Darby in 1816, this was not an official survey; and in any case the line was incorrectly delineated (for political reasons) by Darby’s map publisher John Melish. The line was not firmly fixed until the U.S.-Republic of Texas boundary survey in 1841, which ran the line through Caddo Lake to the east of the Jefferson area. Until that time, 1. BacKGrounD 10 Antebellum Jefferson, Texas there was a strip of disputed territory in which political jurisdiction was uncertain. Trammel’s Trace, which extended from Fulton, Arkansas, to Nacogdoches , Texas, was blazed by Nicholas Trammel around 1815 and was joined above Hughes Springs by another trail blazed by Trammel that extended south from Jonesboro, Texas. The trace crossed over Big Cypress Bayou five miles west of Jefferson slightly above the confluence with French Creek. The trace was the major early entranceway into northeast Texas. In 1825, Frost Thorn was provided a land grant by Mexico extending from the Sabine River on the south to the Red River on the north, with a provision to respect rights established by prior settlement. Thorn was the son-in-law of Haden Edwards, who was provided a grant that included most of East Texas south of the Sabine with the right to settle 800 families. A map apparently prepared for Thorn in 1826 shows the immediate Jefferson area inked-in (as a rectangle) by a later hand (Fig. 1-1). The map is important because it shows that in the late 1820s there was nothing between Sulphur Fork and the Sabine other than the Caddo Indian village, which is shown incorrectly south of Caddo Lake. The early surveys for the Jefferson area shown on the map were probably moot after the abortive Fredonian Rebellion in November, which was led by Edwards and resulted in his removal to Louisiana. The general area in which Jefferson came to be founded was a wilderness until it began to be settled in the late 1830s. The reason for this wilderness status was twofold: the Great Raft and the Caddo Indians. The Great Raft was a logjam on the Red River about 80 miles in length that moved continuously upstream at about a mile a year as its head gained additional timber and its foot decayed. Boats could not penetrate the raft, and settlement along the Red was limited to the area free of the raft. Natchitoches was founded as a French post and as a counterpoint to the Spanish post of Nacogdoches near the foot of the raft in 1714. The Campti settlement on the east side of the river and the Cane River settlement on the west side of the river were established above Natchitoches and expanded upward as the foot of the raft regressed. 11 Background Because the raft acted as a dam on the river, the water had to go somewhere, and distributaries formed continuously on its floodplain, leaving the river above the head of the raft and entering back into the river below the foot of the raft. A navigation route around the raft to the upper Red River was available through a series of streams and lakes on the east...