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

2. What Jefferson Was

18 The business of America has always been business. Towns during the 1800s were places where people congregated to engage in economic activities, with the notable exception of political centers such as county seats. The character of a town was largely determined by the nature of its business activities. Most towns in Texas were agricultural service centers whose merchants sold retail to nearby farmers and planters, as well as to resident populations. Jefferson had retail stores; but if that was all it had, it would have been similar to thousands of other towns. To classify Jefferson simply as a port town is misleading. The vast majority of ports and landings in Texas never developed into towns; and of those that did, only a few became towns of Jefferson’s dimensions. Jefferson would not have become an important town if it had not been a port, but port status does not clarify its distinctive character. Jefferson was a commercial center—that is, a place where large volumes of commodities that were transported from one point to another were exchanged or bought and sold. These were the export commodities that were produced in Jefferson’s market area and the import commodities that were demanded by Jefferson’s market area. Export commodities were sent out of the market area by ox-wagon and placed on steamboats at Jefferson for carriage to New Orleans. Import commodities were brought to Jefferson by steamboat from New Orleans and sent to the interior by ox-wagon. Jefferson was as much an oxwagon destination and point of departure as a steamboat port. 2. What Jefferson was 19 What Jefferson Was Jefferson was a commercial center because large quantities of merchandise and agricultural products passed through it and this happened because of the high volume of production and demand in its market area. Jefferson’s market area encompassed the whole of northeast Texas, extending to the Indian Territory on the north and the Dallas -Bonham axis on the west. The market area is best represented by the map accompanying Edward Smith’s Account of a Journey Through North-Eastern Texas Undertaken in 1849 (Fig. 2-1). Although impressive, the size of the market area was not important in itself. Jefferson was a commercial center because of the dimensions of supply and demand in its market area. Without the large supply produced by agricultural operations and the large demand produced by the agricultural population in its market area, Jefferson would not have developed into anything of importance. Fig. 2-1. Jefferson’s Market Area. Source: Courtesy Archives and Information Services Division, Texas State Library and Archives Commission . 20 Antebellum Jefferson, Texas Cotton production was the dominant economic activity in Jefferson ’s market area. Cotton needed to be exported from the market area because there were no cotton mills. Planters and farmers normally did not bring their cotton to Jefferson before the Civil War. The interior movement of cotton was carried out primarily by slow and expensive commercial ox-wagons and secondarily by producers who wanted to personally sell their cotton in Jefferson. Ox-wagon transport placed severe limitations on the geographic extent of cotton agriculture because the expense of transport made cotton unprofitable if it had to be moved more than 150 miles over land. Waterborne transport was much lower in cost than overland transport. Cotton would not have been grown in northeast Texas without the capacity to export by water. Cotton producers sought the nearest water outlet to minimize transport costs. For most of northeast Texas most of the time, that meant Jefferson. In addition to exports, cotton was the basis for imports. Cotton was produced on plantations, which were large-scale agricultural operations dependent on the skilled labor provided by slaves. Workers needed such things as clothing; cotton production required tools and such things as rope and bagging; and the wealth generated by cotton gave rise to demands for refined articles. In addition, there were smaller farms that produced cotton and other agricultural products, cattle ranches, and small towns with their own resident populations. All of these elements provided demands for merchandise that was not produced in Jefferson’s market area or in Jefferson itself and therefore needed to be imported. Planters, interior merchants, and citizens normally did not go to Jefferson to pick up the merchandise destined for them. The high cost of ox-wagon transport also determined that imports would enter the market area...