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MADISONVILLE RETAIL LOCATIONS
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Just A Little About The Madisonville Texas Area
Writing about the Indians of Madison County is difficult because there were many different groups moving through the area. Each group left a campsite with broken pottery shards, arrow and dart points for us to find hundreds of years later. Pottery found on some campsites does show Caddo influence. We do know that the Bedias and Kickapoo Indians at one time lived in Madison County. After 1770, the Bedias and other Indian groups fought the Spanish, thanks to French influence. Soon, the Bedias Indians were reduced to a mere one hundred men, and in 1854, the remaining Bedias joined the Caddoes on the reservation in Oklahoma. For a short time the Kickapoo Indians made this county their home; but, like the Bedias, they were also moved to the Oklahoma Reservation.
Madison County, in the year 7000 B.C. would be unrecognizable to us today. There was a great ice sheet further north, in some places a mile or so thick, and volcanic activity causing a massive cloud covering the earth. This county, along with the rest of North America, was a lot cooler and wetter than today. Grasses and trees grew taller. The animals fed on these grasses. In this county there were mammoth and the longhorn bison. The longhorn bison had a horn span much like the longhorn cattle we know today, only the bison was at least twice the size of the Texas longhorn. A mammoth grew to a height of at least 15-feet height at the shoulder and weighed in the tons. Bones of the mammoth have been found in gravel beds along the Trinity River. So far, nothing has been found with the bones to suggest that early man killed and butchered them.
Scattered finds, mainly dart points, tell us that early man was in this area by 7000 B.C. This would put man in Madison County in what was known as the late Paleo Period. There are three types of dart points, found in this county, that all fall in the Late Paleo Period. They are in Plainview, Meserve, and Golondrina. These dart points were not shot with a bow. The bow would be invented hundreds of years later. They were shot with a spear thrower called an "Atl-Atl." This spear thrower gave early man a chance to kill his game, the mammoth, or the bison, at a safe distance.
Around 5000 B.C., the mammoth, the longhorn bison, and other large animals had become extinct. This was due to the great climate change of the entire planet. The Indians of this area had to either hunt smaller game, or move on. They continued to live in this manner even after the Spanish and French came.
Most of the dart points and some of the arrow points found tell us that the Indians who once lived here were hunters. There are a few finds of arrow heads that tell us that some groups were warriors as well as hunters. War arrow heads, whether flint or iron, were barbed so they could not be pulled out of a wound. It had to be pushed through, often resulting in death.
Most of the Indian campsites have an age of 3000 or 4000 B.C., to 1500 A.D.; another site, an age of 5000 B.C. to around 1000 A.D.
The Bedias, Kickapoo, and possible Caddo, left their influence. There was one group, even though the did not live here, that not only left their influence, but just the name of the group spread terror not only in Spaniards, but to Texas settlers as well. The called themselves "The People," but to early settlers they were known as the Comanches.
A Comanche was trained to ride a horse usually at five or six years of age. When he grew to his teens, a Comanche and his horse became a terrible war-machine. The war-machine was felt in Madison County. Scalp hunting Comanches made at least two raids in this area. The first was in the late 1700's; the target was the Spanish settlement of Bucareli on the Trinity River. After several Comanche raids between 1774 and 1779, and a few floods, the settlement moved further east.
The last raid which occurred in the 1850's was mainly for horses. This time the Comanches met with stiff resistance from people of Madison and Leon Counties. The Indians never returned.
Today we have only names of creeks and a dozen or more campsites to tell us that for thousands of years this area was once the home of a great people, the American Indian.
Madison County, with an area of 478 square miles in Central East Texas, is one of the smaller counties in the state. It was created in 1853 from portions of Grimes, Walker and Leon Counties and was named for the President James Madison. The county is bounded by the Trinity River on the east, the Navasota River on the west, and Bedias Creek on the south. The Trinity is said to have been christened in 1689, at the time Alonso de Leon's expedition from Mexico to East Texas reached the waterway. Leon's expedition was aimed at discouraging French encroachment along the north, as well as exploration, colonization, and Christianizing the local Indian tribes.
As early as 1690, the area was established as an important route for travel. Two of the state's oldest thoroughfares, El Camino Real and the La Bahia Trail, converge at Midway on the northeastern end of Madison County. These routes were used by early French and Spanish explorers.
Luis de Moscoso, a member of Hernando De Soto's Spanish expedition, continued exploration after De Soto's death in the mid-1500s. Historians believe de Moscoso reached the Trinity River and crossed its west bank at a site known later as Robins Ferry, just above the mouth of Bedias Creek.
LaSalle, the French explorer, also visited the area, and it may have been the last place he visited. A map acquired from the Spanish archives, published in 1773, bears a scribbled note just below the present site of Madisonville, which reads, "Here is where Monsieur de la Salle was murdered in 1687." The information was probably provided by the de Leon expedition.
The La Bahia Trail was formed by Indians traveling through the forests of central Texas to the wetlands of Louisiana. It was known to Spanish explorers, such as de Leon.
The El Camino Real, also known as the Old San Antonio Road, or OSR, is believed by many historians to be the oldest regularly traveled roadway or trail in Texas. It began as a buffalo trail, and was used by Native American travelers. The first European-stock tracing of the El Camino Real was by Domingo Teran de Los Rios in 1691. The French trader, Louis Juchereau de St. Denis traveled the trail in 1714. Juan Agustin Morfi traveled the road in 1778 and left a detailed description of it in his travel diary. Moses Austin was followed by hundreds of settlers down the El Camino Real to take up land in Central Texas.
Bucareli was one of the early settlements in the area, a thriving Spanish village on the Trinity River, probably located near present day Midway. Founded in September 1774 as an outpost against the French, Bucareli grew to house nearly 350 people. It included a plaza, church, guard house, 20 houses in hewn wood, and a number of huts. In 1777 an epidemic depleted the population, followed by Comanche raids in 1778, and a flood in 1779. Gil Y'Barbo and his followers deserted the village site without permission from Spanish officials and moved further into east Texas, establishing what is now Nacogdoches in April of 1779.
Trinidad, a Mexican settlement established 7 miles east of Midway in 1805, consisted of a fort and a town. It was captured by the Magee-Gutierrez Expedition in October 1812, and the inhabitants of the town were later butchered by order of the Spanish Commander. The town never resettled.
Anglo-American settlers moved into the area in the 1820s. Major W. C."Billy" Young of South Carolina was the first permanent settler in what was to become Madison County. He later earned fame in the Battle of San Jacinto, where he fought with distinction. It was recorded that he was the first to utter the words, "Remember the Alamo," and "Remember Goliad."
The first ferry on the Trinity River was established by Joe Leaky in 1829, and was later owned by Nathaniel Robbins. He built a cedar log, two-story tavern inn on the north side of the highway, a short distance from the deserted site of Bucareli. Elisha Clapp acquired the ferry in 1852, and his descendants operated it until 1930, when Clapp's Ferry Bridge was constructed. In 1836, fleeing settlers caught up in the Runaway Scrape reached the ferry site on the flooded Trinity when they received news of the Texas Army's victory at the Battle of San Jacinto.
Dr P. W. Kittrell, who represented the area in the State Legislature, proposed in 1853 that a new county be created from Walker, Grimes, and Leon Counties. The measure was adopted, and in accordance with his wishes, the county was named after the U.S. President, James Madison. The county was created in 1853, and organized in 1854. The county has an area of 478 miles.
Madisonville, the county seat, is located on the league of land granted by the Mexican government on May 28, 1835, to Job Starks Collard, a member of Austin's Colony. In 1854, Collard donated 200 acres of land to the county for the purpose of establishing a county seat. He operated the town's first business establishments, a hotel, and a general store.
The first three sessions of County Court in 1854 were held under some oak trees southwest of what is now the First Baptist Church.
In 1888, the fist newspaper of the county was established, but was replaced by The Madisonville Meteor which has published continually since 1894.
The first telephone line was installed in 1904, electrical service in 1913, and gas in 1940-41.
Source: Madison County Chamber of Commerce
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Last Update: Friday July 27, 2007 1:10 P.M.
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