Inventory of the county archives of Texas : Gregg County, no. 92 Page: 5
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5
Historical Sketch (First entry, p. 57)
Mexicans in like manner. The Latin-Americans, at any rate, were content
to allow Nacogdoches to remain their northern outpost in East Texas.7
By 1825-30, however, there were a few white settlers in the neighborhood
of present Gregg County. Frost Thorn's grant in East Texas included
at least the western half of the land now comprised in Gregg
County, and he must have introduced a few families into the region before
he lost his contract. In 1828 Sanchez recorded in his diary that
most of the settlers in East Texas were either Anglo-Americans from the
North, or Cherokees, living on lands granted to Frost Thorn.9
Sanchez, who wrote his diary as he traveled' recorded his impression
of East Texas; and if his description is to be taken as an index
to his feelings on the matter, he was not surprised to find few settlers
in the region:
The abundance of water makes all of Texas very beautiful,
especially in the western part, for although a corresponding
beauty is found on the east in its vast and majestic woods,
this is marred during the most beautiful seasons of the year
by the terrible floods caused by the rivers which form
horrible marshes and lakes where immense numbers of mosquitoes,
ticks, red bugs, gnats, gadflies, etc., breed. They
are a pest both day and night, and although they disappear
in the winter, the furious northwest winds and the heavy
snows allow one to enjoy only fields covered with leafless
trees. Valuable woods are found in great abundance and they
are used to build houses because there is no stone anywhere.
The immense woods, where the sun barely penetrates, consist
of oaks of all kinds, pines, sabines, laurel trees, walnuts,
plum trees, sugar maples, sasafras, lilac trees, mulberries,
and weeping willows. Here only the murmur of the wind as it
sways the tree tops, the babbling of the rivulets as they
glide along the old tree trunks, the singing of wild birds;
and the wailing of the small.owls that hoot even at midday,
attract the attention of the traveler with their melancholy
and unnatural melody. In.all the unfrequented places wild
bulls and cows, deer, bears, coyotes, wolves, and donkeys
are found, all of which flee at the approach of man.l0
7. "Early Days in Red River County," Bulletin, of the Stephen F. Austin
State Teachers College, No. 38 (19532), p. 51 G. L. Crocket, "'The
Spanish Town of Nacogdoches," ibid., pp. 108-118.
8. Mary Virginia Henderson, "Minor Empresario Contracts for the Colonization
of Texas, 1825-1834," Southwestern Historical Quarterly,
XXXII (1928-29), 16. ............
9. Sanchez, "A Trip," Quarterly, XXIX (1925-26), 260, 288.
10. Ibid., pp. 259, 260,
w~_ X
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Historical Records Survey. Texas. Inventory of the county archives of Texas : Gregg County, no. 92, book, August 1940; San Antonio, Tex.. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth25249/m1/12/: accessed May 7, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting UNT Libraries Special Collections.