Clinton, Texas
History
From Handbook
of Texas Online:
Clinton,
former county seat of DeWitt
County, was located on the west bank of the Guadalupe
River five miles southwest of the site of present Cuero.
The first settlers of the area were members of DeWitt's colony;
the Richard Chisholm family settled in January 1829 and the Andrew
Lockhart family later that March. The town gained notoriety during
the Sutton-Taylor feud. Life in this area was rugged and perilous,
despite DeWitt's settlements to the north and De León's colony to
the southeast. In the fall of 1829 Comanches kidnapped young Matilda
Lockhart and three visiting companions as the children were
gathering pecans in the Guadalupe riverbottom. The Lockhart girl
was rescued, but she died from the effects of the ordeal; the other
three children were never found. About 1839 Richard Chisholm began
operating a ferry across the Guadalupe River about 3½ miles below
the confluence of the river and Sandies Creek. He soon opened a
store and a horse-driven gristmill that was used by settlers from
as far away as Meyersville.
Clinton was not established until after the organization of DeWitt
County on March 24, 1846. Chisholm, eager to have the new county
seat located on his land, deeded 640 acres to friends with instructions
to survey the land and try to induce the commissioners, among them
Daniel Boone Friar, to accommodate his wishes. James Norman Smith
surveyed the townsite, which was named Clinton in honor of the son
of the empresario Green DeWitt. Yet Chisholm's friends would not
grant the commissioners the added land required for a county seat;
instead Cameron, on the J. J. Tumlinson survey east of the Guadalupe
River, became county seat. As Clinton grew rapidly, its citizens
contested the Cameron decision. Each town became county seat alternately
several times, the last change being the result of an election in
August 1850, which finally made Clinton the seat of government.
Clinton prospered. Court was held in a log house until a log courthouse
was built at a cost of $400 in 1852. A frame building was erected
in 1855 and followed by a two-story courthouse in 1858. The latter,
insured for $8,000, was Clinton's last courthouse; it was moved
to Cuero in 1876 when that town became
county seat. William Cochran Blair organized Clinton's first church,
Live Oak Presbyterian, in July 1849. Clinton Methodists organized
in the 1850s. Both denominations held services in the log courthouse
until 1856, when the Presbyterians built a church that they shared
with the Methodists. Clinton had no school until about 1855, when
Rev. and Mrs. James M. Connelly held classes as part of their Presbyterian
ministry. During the Civil War years Viola Case moved her Victoria
Female Academy to Clinton when Victoria
was threatened by Union invasion. Public school instruction began
in the 1870s. The county's earliest Masonic lodge was established
at Clinton; a two-story hall was built in 1852, to which the Cameron
lodge then moved. Clinton's first hotel was a log house with outside
dining facilities. A later two-story frame hotel had a reputation
for its fresh oysters. Jesse O. Wheeler of Victoria operated a branch
store at Clinton that achieved sales of $12,000 and $18,000 in 1850
and 1851 respectively. Among the town's lawyers were Henry Clay
Pleasants and John W. Stayton. The Clinton post office was established
in October 1849.
William Read Scurry of Clinton, with Fielding Jones of Victoria,
represented the Victoria district in the Secession Convention (1861).
During the Civil War William J. Weisiger organized a company at
Clinton, which later fought with George H. Giddings's cavalry battalion
in the Rio Grande area. During Reconstruction
Clinton and other surrounding towns were occupied by troops
based at Victoria
. The traditional interpretation says that bad times following the
war contributed to the notorious Sutton-Taylor feud, which
originated in Clinton on Christmas Eve 1868, when Bill Sutton killed
William "Buck" Taylor. The family feud that followed developed into
the longest and most bloody in Texas history, and Clinton residents
continued to be drawn into the fray. On June 20, 1874, R. P. "Scrap"
Taylor and two others jailed at the town were lynched by Sutton
sympathizers. The feud finally ended in Clinton with the killing
of Jim Taylor and two companions by a Cuero posse on December 27,
1875.
Although the feud gave Clinton a bad reputation and caused many
residents to move away, a more significant cause of the town's decline
was the extension in 1873 of the Gulf, Western Texas and Pacific
Railway to Cuero, across the river. The railroad induced many Clinton
businesses and residents to move. In 1876 Cuero
became county seat, and decline was then swift for Clinton. Clinton
Methodists remained active until the 1870s. The Presbyterians moved
in 1883 to Cuero. The Masons moved
their lodge to Yorktown in 1877,
and the Clinton post office closed in 1886. The only available population
estimate for Clinton dates from this period of decline and records
150 residents in 1885. Although the Clinton school served the surrounding
rural community from 1881 until 1954, by 1900 there remained little
evidence that the once prosperous town ever existed. The large cemetery
is overgrown with brush.
Craig
H. Roell, “Clinton, TX (DeWitt County),” Handbook of Texas Online,
accessed October 08, 2021, https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/clinton-tx-dewitt-county.
Published by the Texas State Historical Association.
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