Gateway to Texas: The History of Orange and Orange County Page: 38
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GAIEAY 10) ILXAS
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Art deal of twenty dollar note, Government of exas, i8.satisfied and moved back to Liberty without locating
any claim.
It is recorded that Reason's son, Freeman D.
Green, was born in Green's Bluff on August 3,
1837. Also, Reason Green was serving as Associ-
ate Justice of Jefferson County on May 31, 1837.
This was while Jefferson County still included
what is now Orange County. By 1840, Reason
Green and his family must have no longer livedin Green's Bluff because they are listed in the
Liberty County census of that year.
If certain documents pertaining to a lawsuit
(Burnley vs. Black, United States District Court,
Galveston, r855) are to be believed, Green's Bluff
was sometimes called "Strong's Bluff". The ori-
gin of this latter name has been lost in the mists
of time, but it evidently dates from the same era
as the former.
It would seem that with the departure of the1)r in n .wu- a lial 1 1
f 4
uZ;Green family, the community was deprived of a
stabilizing influence. The area's inhabitants lost
no time in repeatedly renaming the town. A
journal kept by Colonel Thomas S. McFarland
notes that in 184o the site was called "Pine
Bluff," where "they are laying off a town to be
called 'Huntley', in honor of General Memucan
Hunt." A diary kept by Robert Everett Russell
confirms this. At approximately the same time,
Orange (or perhaps a portion of present-day
Orange) was being labeled the "Town of Jeffer-
son". This gave rise to the variants "Lower Town
of Jefferson" and "East Jefferson". Apparently
there was no direct connection with Claiborne
West's earlier attempt to name the county seat
"Jefferson". Instead, the names were promoted
for various subdivisions by enthusiastic real es-
tate developers.
The Congress of the Republic of Texas added
to the confusion when, on January 29, 1842, it
changed the name of Green's Bluff to "Madi-
son". This was the by-product of an attempt
(struck down that same year by the Texas Su-
preme Court) to create the "judicial" county of
Neches (which was to include today's Orange
County) through passage of"An Act to organize
a part of the counties of Jefferson and Jasper for
Judicial and other purposes". A part of Section 6
of that Act reads: ". .. the place of holding dis-
trict and county courts ... shall be styled the
town of Madison ..." Reputedly, this was to
honor United States President James Madison.
In contrast to the stillborn "judicial" county
of Neches, the name Madison endured for some
16 years, making it the longest-lived of the pre-
Orange appellations. The Texas Legislature in-
corporated the town of Madison on September i,
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Williams, Howard C. Gateway to Texas: The History of Orange and Orange County, book, 1988; Orange, Tex.. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth39146/m1/56/: accessed April 26, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; .