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Fort Brown:
A refuge from Indian attacksby
Bob Bowman | |
In
early East Texas, dozens of forts
were built by settlers to provide a safe and sturdy refuge from Indian attacks.
One
such fort stood in north central Houston County where Indian attacks were common.
Known as Fort Brown, it was built near Grapeland
by Reuben Brown and his neighbors in the mid-1830s.
Reuben and his wife
Sarah settled on San Pedro Creek in 1834. Sarah was the daughter of Elder Daniel
Parker, who came from Illinois around 1830, hoping to build a church, but
Mexican colonization laws prohibited the establishment on any church except those
of the Roman Catholic faith.
Parker
returned to Illinois, organized his church there, and brought his forty members
back to Texas in 1833 in a ox-drawn wagon train of
24 wagons laden with members of eight families and their possessions.
Following
the route of the Mississippi River, the wagon train crossed Missouri, Arkansas,
Louisiana and entered Texas. Crossing the Sabine
River, they followed an old Indian trail, the Coushatta Trail, used by Indians
for trading and migration, and eventually crossed the Neches
River and made their way to the banks of San Pedro Creek in Anderson County.
Near
the creek, the families built Fort Brown in what is today known as the Refuge
community. Several tribes of Indians lived in the Houston County area and,
while attacks were not consistent, they were enough to make settlers feel uncomfortable
without a place of safety.
From the Refuge community, the Parker family
went in different directions. Daniel
Parker took his children and went to a site near Elkhart
and reestablished the “Pilgrim Predestinarian Regular Baptist Church” in 1833.
It was the first Baptist church in Texas.
Other members of the Parker clan
traveled westward to Limestone County and built Fort
Parker near Groesbeck.
Fort Brown was built of post oak logs. Little is known about the fort,
but it was used from 1833 until 1860 when the Indian scares subsided. It stood
several hundred yards from Refuge Cemetery on land later owned by Huford Allen.
Some descendants of families who lived near the fort recall seeing the
decaying logs used in the fort’s construction. Others say the logs were moved
to other home sites for construction purposes. Pieces of pottery, glass and even
cooking utensils have been found in the area.
Today, little is left of
the Refuge community. Its principal landmarks are a rock store used for many years
and Refuge Cemetery, where Reuben Brown, his wife and several children are buried.
The
Browns’ oldest son, John, who died in 1921, lived his entire life within a mile
of Fort Brown, his birthplace in 1865.
In the mid-1930s the settlement
had four stores, two churches, and a number of houses. After World
War II, many of the residents moved away, and by the mid-1960s only a cemetery,
a sawmill, and a few scattered houses remained. Bob
Bowman's East Texas
April 11, 2010 Column
A weekly column syndicated in 109 East Texas newspapers
Copyright
Bob Bowman | |
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