Links

Wharton County Museum

Wharton Chamber of Commerce

Egypt, Texas

El Campo, Texas

Eagle Lake, Texas

Texana Lodge

Texas Settlement

Portal to Texas History

What was the Texas Alabama Settlement?

This was a settlement made up of close-knit families and friends that traveled from the Tuscumbia/Decatur Alabama area to settle in Austin's 3rd Colony, in what is now Jackson County.

What do the history books say?


History of Texas, From 1685 to 1892 by John Henry Brown

“But the largest and most remarkable addition to Austin's colony, arriving by land in De cember, 1830, and by water in February, 1831, was a self-organized colony of kinsmen and friends from Decatur and Tuscumbia, Alabama, who settled on the Navidad in Jackson County, and on the Colorado in the neighborhood called Egypt, now in the upper part of Wharton County. Those who came by land were the brothers Thomas and William Menefee, with large families; George Sutherland (who commanded a company in storming San Antonio and whose son, William, fell in the Alamo), Wm. J. E. Heard, family and mother; and Thomas J. Reed and family, reaching the Navidad, December 9, 1830. Those who came by water down the Tennessee, Ohio and Mississippi in flat boats to New Orleans, thence in the schooner Emblem, Captain Canon, to the head of Lavaca Bay, arriving there February 12, 1831, were brothers Jesse White (whose son, Frank M., was commissioner of the General Land Office from 1857 to 1863), and Benjamin J. White; J. M. Heard, Samuel A. Rogers and family, Mrs. Elizabeth Dever and family, John Davis and family, Mrs. Jemima Heard's family (she having come by land), Roys ter and family, Warren J. Winston and family, and single men named Samuel Davis, Hart, Warren and Willoughby. On the next trip of the Emblem, there came with their families, T. H. P. Heard, Morgan Rector, Joseph Rector (killed by lightning a few weeks later), Richard R. Royal, Robert D. Moore and John D. Newell, embracing in all the equivalent of twenty-three large families and many slaves.”