Some History of Van Zandt County, Volume 1 Page: 91
220 p. : ill., col. maps, plates, ports. ; 23 cm.View a full description of this book.
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CHAPTER 6.
NACOGDOCHES AND HENDERSON COUNTIES.
A Biographical Sketch of General J. Pinkney Henderson. Henderson
County; Its Creation, Organization and Historical
Record and Data.
NACOGDOCHES.
As a preliminary to writing the history of Van Zandt county,
it seems proper to briefly sketch the territory from which the
county was carved, that the reader may know how the county ap-
peared before its organization. To this end and for this purpose
I will briefly notice Nacogdoches, of which Van Zandt county was
once a part, so that the reader can more readily trace it back to
the discovery of America.
About the year 1690, Don Alonzo De Leon, governor of of Coa-
huila, a state in the province of Mexico, a Spanish colony by con-
quest, in which was established a number of Missions in east
Texas. Among these was Nacogdoches, located at the confluence
of the Bonita with La Nana Creeks, in what is now Nacogdoches
county, Texas. The settlement in and around this mission was
necessarily slow, for numerous causes, chief among these were
owing to the fact that tribes of hostile Indians threatened it on all
sides; coupled with the further fact that under Spanish rule for-
eigners were prohibited, under penalty of death, from entering
the settlement. A few Catholic missionaries and Indian prose-
lytes, eked out a miserable existence by killing such game as they
could take with crude instruments they possessed and cultivating
small patches of maize and raising some stock. In 1778, Gil Y.
Barbo erected the famous Stone Fort at that place, which gave bet-
ter protection to those under its shelter; and about that time some
wealthy families reached there from New Orleans and efforts
were made to open up semblances of roads through the primeval
forests, that had obtained up to that time. The early settlers
lived in a very primitive manner. There were no grist mills; no
cotton gins and no accessible markets through which the outer
world could be reached. The East Texas missions were moved to
locations on the San Antonio river in 1731.
Col. Juan Almonte, in a report on Texas, in 1834, has this to
say: "There will be exported during this year about 2000 bales
of cotton, from the Nacogdoches department. There are ma-
chines for cleaning and pressing cotton in the departments of Na-
cogdoches and Brazos." In the year that this report was made,
Texas was divided into three departments, viz.: Bexar, Nacog-
doches and Brazos, each embracing an immense territory. The
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Manning, Wentworth. Some History of Van Zandt County, Volume 1, book, 1919; Des Moines, Iowa. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth61110/m1/91/: accessed April 19, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; .