Inventory of county records, Jefferson County Courthouse, Beaumont, Texas, Volume 1 Page: 1
Volume 1 of 3; xii, 175 p. maps ; 28 cm.View a full description of this book.
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INTRODUCTION
Jefferson County (1975 est. population 241,246) is a 951square-mile
area located on the Gulf Coast of southeastern Texas.
Created in 1836 and organized the following year, the county
was named in honor of Thomas Jefferson, third president of the
United States. The original county seat, a small community named
Jefferson, was established in 1835 as a Spanish municipality,
but in 1838 Beaumont replaced the tiny township as seat of
Jefferson County government.
The earliest permanent resident was Noah Tevis, who came from
Tennesse in 1825, settling at a site that he called Tevis Bluff.
Ten years later, Henry Millard, agent for the Thomas Huling
Company, purchased fifty acres of land from Tevis and laid out
the townsite that later became Beaumront. By 1840 the settlement
of Beaumont had become a lumbering and shipping center, contributing
to a level of mild prosperity uncommon during that time.
Population began to increase steadily. By the 1850s Jefferson
County had become so populous that the state legislature decided
to reduce its size, creating Orange County in 1852 and Hardin
and Chambers counties in 1858 from Jefferson County lands.
Despite these reductions before the Civil War and the
problems confronted during post-war Reconstruction, Jefferson
County continued to grow. In 1878, New Yorkers, upset by the
inflated prices of waterfront lots in Sabine Pass, established
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Jefferson County Historical Commission (Tex.). Inventory of county records, Jefferson County Courthouse, Beaumont, Texas, Volume 1, book, 1979; Denton, Tex.. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth25204/m1/14/: accessed April 26, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting UNT Libraries Special Collections.