EAST TEXAS IN THE EARLY DAYS
If we could somehow walk through the East Texas of 200 years ago, it is likely we would find a countryside with little if any resemblance to that which we are so familiar with today. The land was an unbroken continuation of the rich Southern forests; immense towering pines in the uplands and the ancient deep hardwood canopies in the creek and river bottoms. In some places the forest would open up onto an open prarie stretching for miles. In other areas vast impenetrable cane breaks inhibited passage for all but the wild creatures that inhabited them. Black bear roamed with the wolf and the panther, and the land abounded with wild game.
Towns, where they existed, were little more than a scattering of various log structures intermingled with free ranging livestock, and rarely a patch of cultivated vegetables enclosed in a rough split picket fence to keep the hogs out. There was always the presence of provisional Spanish, and later Mexican, soldiers for keeping the peace and protecting the populace. A tavern or inn was likely a room in someone's log home.
Other than serving as posts of government the towns existed for the purpose of commerce, which was carried on between the predominant Spanish, occasional American, and ever present Indian inhabitants of the region. Once whatever transaction that had brought them there was concluded, the early Texas occupant traveled on to his next destination, or ventured back to his home where he was absorbed into the vastness that was the East Texas wilderness.
The villages of the Ais Indians, and the more prevalent Caddo tribes into which they had by now been adopted, were still a fixture in the forests along the rivers and deep running creeks. Farther to their south were the Atakapas. By the early 1800's the Caddoan people would be joined by splinters of various migrating Eastern tribes like the Shawnee, Cherokee, Alabama, and may others who were being increasingly forced from their ancestral homelands by a relentless, and sometimes ruthless, expansion of America.
At the same time, a few Americans themselves were beginning to cross the western US boundary at the Sabine River. Mexico had declared for and won independence from the Spanish king in 1821. Stephen Fuller Austin had finally been successful in getting the new Mexican government to reestablish the immigration policy for land settlement in Texas that his father had obtained from Spain.
Known as the empresarial system, the Mexican government offered inducements of land to agents (empresarios), such as Austin, to bring in immigrants for the purpose of settling the generally unpopulated region of its country known as Texas. The motive was not one of generosity; a populated and settled land would be less of a viable target for hostile native tribes, particularly the Waco and Tehuacana tribes from the west whose raids reached all the way to the Gulf Coast.
The relatively lenient provisions for settlement, in which the head of a family was offered a league of land consisting of 4,428 acres, were too tempting for many struggling farmers, merchants, and craftsmen back in a young United States to pass up. There, economic conditions were still severely unstable from the so called Panic of 1819. And the ability to purchase land holdings large enough to appropriate one's fortune from was difficult for all but the wealthy classes.
Thus it was that one John Bevil answered the beckoning from the new frontier in the Western Woods. In the mid-1820's Bevil, his wife Francis, and eight children crossed the Sabine and settled in the area east of the upper Neches River that would become present day Jasper and Newton Counties. By 1830 there were about 30 families living in what was known as Bevil's Settlement, between the Neches and Sabine Rivers. At that time the settlement was organized into a precinct of the Municipality of Nacogdoches.
In 1834 Bevil was granted a first class grant of one league of land by the Mexican state of Coahuila y Texas. That same year the Municipality of Bevil was created and John Bevil was appointed alcalde, the municipal administrative and judicial authority. During the next two years both Bevil and local settlers were directly involved with the issues and actions that lead to the break with the centralist regime of Mexico's self imposed dictator Santa Anna, and ultimately the birth of a new nation: the Republic of Texas.
Towns, where they existed, were little more than a scattering of various log structures intermingled with free ranging livestock, and rarely a patch of cultivated vegetables enclosed in a rough split picket fence to keep the hogs out. There was always the presence of provisional Spanish, and later Mexican, soldiers for keeping the peace and protecting the populace. A tavern or inn was likely a room in someone's log home.
Other than serving as posts of government the towns existed for the purpose of commerce, which was carried on between the predominant Spanish, occasional American, and ever present Indian inhabitants of the region. Once whatever transaction that had brought them there was concluded, the early Texas occupant traveled on to his next destination, or ventured back to his home where he was absorbed into the vastness that was the East Texas wilderness.
The villages of the Ais Indians, and the more prevalent Caddo tribes into which they had by now been adopted, were still a fixture in the forests along the rivers and deep running creeks. Farther to their south were the Atakapas. By the early 1800's the Caddoan people would be joined by splinters of various migrating Eastern tribes like the Shawnee, Cherokee, Alabama, and may others who were being increasingly forced from their ancestral homelands by a relentless, and sometimes ruthless, expansion of America.
At the same time, a few Americans themselves were beginning to cross the western US boundary at the Sabine River. Mexico had declared for and won independence from the Spanish king in 1821. Stephen Fuller Austin had finally been successful in getting the new Mexican government to reestablish the immigration policy for land settlement in Texas that his father had obtained from Spain.
Known as the empresarial system, the Mexican government offered inducements of land to agents (empresarios), such as Austin, to bring in immigrants for the purpose of settling the generally unpopulated region of its country known as Texas. The motive was not one of generosity; a populated and settled land would be less of a viable target for hostile native tribes, particularly the Waco and Tehuacana tribes from the west whose raids reached all the way to the Gulf Coast.
The relatively lenient provisions for settlement, in which the head of a family was offered a league of land consisting of 4,428 acres, were too tempting for many struggling farmers, merchants, and craftsmen back in a young United States to pass up. There, economic conditions were still severely unstable from the so called Panic of 1819. And the ability to purchase land holdings large enough to appropriate one's fortune from was difficult for all but the wealthy classes.
Thus it was that one John Bevil answered the beckoning from the new frontier in the Western Woods. In the mid-1820's Bevil, his wife Francis, and eight children crossed the Sabine and settled in the area east of the upper Neches River that would become present day Jasper and Newton Counties. By 1830 there were about 30 families living in what was known as Bevil's Settlement, between the Neches and Sabine Rivers. At that time the settlement was organized into a precinct of the Municipality of Nacogdoches.
In 1834 Bevil was granted a first class grant of one league of land by the Mexican state of Coahuila y Texas. That same year the Municipality of Bevil was created and John Bevil was appointed alcalde, the municipal administrative and judicial authority. During the next two years both Bevil and local settlers were directly involved with the issues and actions that lead to the break with the centralist regime of Mexico's self imposed dictator Santa Anna, and ultimately the birth of a new nation: the Republic of Texas.