All that remains of the town of Linnville, an early Texas port along what is now known as Lavaca Bay, is a 1936 gray granite historical marker a small pullout along the FM 1090, north of Port Lavaca.
The state historical marker reads as follows:
"SITE OF LINNVILLE
An early Texas port
named for
JOHN JOSEPH LINN
1798 – 1885
A pioneer merchant of Victoria who located his warehouse here in 1831
Around this a settlement grew up which was destroyed by Comanche Indians on August 8, 1840
Erected by the state of Texas
1936"
From the Handbook of Texas online: (
visit link)
"LINNVILLE, TX (CALHOUN COUNTY).Linnville was on Lavaca Bay twenty miles from Victoria at a site then in Victoria County and now in Calhoun County. It was one of the most important ports of entry during the early period of the Republic of Texas. The town, originally called New Port, was established by John J. Linn in 1831. It was in De León's colony on a quarter-league grant belonging to Pedro Gonzales. Linn was perhaps assisted in the founding by William G. Ewing, another prominent merchant. Like Cox's Point, Dimmitt's Landing, and Texana, the other ports around Lavaca Bay, Linnville grew up around a core of warehouses. In structures owned by Linn, Ewing, and others were stored goods unloaded from ships and destined for inland markets such as Victoria, Gonzales, and San Antonio; eventually Linnville also became the site of the customhouse for the District of Lavaca.
The population of Linnville was estimated at 200 about 1839. Linn listed 130 town lots for taxation in 1840. That year's census listed eleven slaves in the village. The port also received much attention that year in various emigrants' guides to Texas (see EMIGRANTS' GUIDES TO TEXAS). Orceneth Fisher, in Sketches of Texas in 1840 (1841), called Linnville "a place of considerable business." George W. Bonnell wrote about Linnville as one of the four Lavaca Bay ports "where a great many goods have been received. It is finely situated for the commerce of the up country, and will no doubt be a place of considerable importance. The custom house for the district of La Baca is located at Linnville." According to Francis Moore, Jr., in Map and Description of Texas (1840), the port "is now attracting some attention, as it is the point to which most of the goods and merchandise are shipped for Victoria and other `settlements' on the Guadalupe and Lavacca."
Among the prominent residents or landowners of Linnville besides Linn and Ewing were Elijah Bennett, who acquired a warehouse, wharf, and hotel in 1837; district judge James W. Robinson and Samuel Maverick, both of whom owned warehouses; Col. John Forbes, who was commissary general of the Texas army in 1836; John H. Harry, acting quartermaster of the Texas army in 1840; county judge John Hays, who also owned a warehouse; and Hugh Oran Watts, customs collector for the district of Lavaca beginning in 1839.
Linnville was the ordnance arsenal and depot for the Federalist armies of Mexico during their attempt to defeat Centralist forces under Antonio López de Santa Anna; nearby Victoria was the headquarters of the short-lived provisional government of the Republic of the Rio Grande of Jesús Cárdenas and Antonio Canales in March and April 1840. It was this association, together with the rich stores of merchandise, that prompted Comanches, incited both by a desire for revenge after the Council House Fight and by Mexican Centralists working to defeat Canales, to attack Linnville and Victoria in August 1840. Their attack destroyed the port town (see LINNVILLE RAID OF 1840).
Only one building remained after the Comanches sacked and burned Linnville on August 8, 1840; Linn, Ewing, Maverick, Robinson, Hays, and Bennett were among those who lost small fortunes in the destruction. Afterward, there was some attempt to rebuild the village. Records indicate that land purchases occurred in 1841 and that merchants such as Lane and West Company, a mercantile that had a wharf in July of that year, were active; but most residents fled and gathered at a site called Labbacca (La Vaca), 3½ miles southwest of Linnville near the mouth of Linn Bayou. The body of customs collector Watts, who had been killed during the raid, was the first buried in nearby Ranger Cemetery. Labbacca, or Port Lavaca as it is called today, continued to grow in importance as a port, and its prosperity contributed to the final decline and abandonment of Linnville. The deserted locality became part of Calhoun County when it was established in 1846.
The site of Linnville, which is now partly covered by water, is on Lavaca Bay in Calhoun County at the end of East Martin Road, 3½ miles northeast of Port Lavaca and just off Farm Road 1090. A granite marker was placed there during the Texas Centennial in 1936, and a historical marker was erected in 1964."
More information on the Comanche raid that sealed the fate of Linnville, also from the Handbook of Texas online: (
visit link)
"LINNVILLE RAID OF 1840.
The sacking of Victoria and Linnville in August 1840 in what was then Victoria County was the strategic object of a great Comanche raid in 1840, the most terrifying of all Comanche raids in Southeast Texas. The attack originated as an aftermath of the Council House Fight in San Antonio in March 1840. By August the Penateka Comanches were able to accept the leadership of their remaining chief, Buffalo Hump, the others having been killed in the Council House Fight. In what became the largest of all southern Comanche raids, Buffalo Hump launched a retaliatory attack down the Guadalupe valley east and south of Gonzales. The band numbered perhaps as many as 1,000, including the families of the warriors, who followed to make camps and seize plunder. The number of warriors was probably between 400 and 500, though witnesses put the figure higher. The total included a good number of Kiowas and Mexican guides.
The raiders first appeared at Victoria without warning on the afternoon of August 6, and upon crossing Spring Creek were mistaken at first for Lipans, members of a friendly group that often traded with settlers around the town. "We of Victoria were startled by the apparitions presented by the sudden appearance of six hundred mounted Comanches in the immediate outskirts of the village," wrote John J. Linn, who recorded the attack on Victoria and the burning of Linnville in his Reminiscences of Fifty Years in Texas (1883). The Comanches killed a number of slaves working in fields and also some Whites who were unable to reach Victoria. They captured over 1,500 horses belonging to area residents and to some Mexican horse traders who had arrived with a large herd. The Indians surrounded the town, but the settlers' defensive efforts apparently prevented their sacking the town itself. The attackers retired to Spring Creek at day's end and killed a White settler and two Black enslaved people before a group of Victoria men left for the Cuero Creek, Lavaca, and Gonzales settlements for help. The next day the Comanches killed a party of men returning to town, except for Jesse O. Wheeler and a companion, who reached safety.
With their spoils the Indians then left Victoria and thundered toward the coast. They camped the night of August 7 on Placido (now Placedo) Creek on the ranch of Plácido Benavides, about twelve miles from Linnville. There two wagoners were intercepted, of whom one escaped and the other was killed. Three miles from Linnville the raiders killed two Black men cutting hay. Tradition holds that Daniel D. Brown warned the citizens of the danger and that Mary Margaret Kerr Mitchell rode horseback across Prairie Chicken Reef with word of the attack on Victoria. Nevertheless, early on August 8, the Comanches surprised the town; most residents supposed them to be Mexican horse traders.
The Indians surrounded the small port of Linnville and began pillaging the stores and houses. They killed three Whites, including customs officer Hugh Oran Watts, who delayed escape to retrieve a gold watch; they captured Watts's wife of only twenty-one days, Juliet Constance, and a Black woman and child. The surprised people of Linnville fled to the water and were saved by remaining aboard small boats and a schooner captained by William G. Marshall at anchor in the bay. From their Gulf vantage point the refugees witnessed the destruction of their town. For the entire day the Comanches plundered and burned buildings. They tied feather beds and bolts of cloth to their horses and dragged them about in sport. They herded large numbers of cattle into pens and slaughtered them. One exasperated onlooker, Judge John Hays, grabbed a gun and waded ashore through the shallow water, but the Indians ignored him. When he returned to the schooner his gun was found to have been unloaded.
Goods valued at $300,000 were at Linnville at the time of the raid; many items were en route from New Orleans to San Antonio. Linn noted that in his warehouse were several cases of hats and umbrellas belonging to James Robinson, a San Antonio merchant. "These the Indians made free with, and went dashing about the blazing village, amid their screeching squaws and `little Injuns,' like demons in a drunken saturnalia, with Robinson's hats on their heads and Robinson's umbrellas bobbing about on every side like tipsy young balloons." After loading the plunder onto pack mules the raiders, attired in their booty, finally retired in the afternoon with some 3,000 horses and a number of captives, including Mrs. Watts, and encamped across the bayou near the old road.
By this time the men of Victoria had recruited reinforcements from the Cuero Creek settlement. On the morning of August 7 the combined forces joined volunteers from the Gonzales and Lavaca settlements under Adam Zumwalt and Benjamin McCulloch and skirmished with the Comanches about twelve miles east of Victoria on Marcado Creek and again on Casa Blanca Creek, two branches of Garcitas Creek. The Indians stole away with their captives and plunder but were defeated by volunteers at Plum Creek near the site of present Lockhart on August 12 (see PLUM CREEK, BATTLE OF). Although the Indians tried to kill their Victoria and Linnville captives during this final battle, Juliet Watts's corset prevented her arrow wound from killing her. She returned to the Linnville area, married Dr. J. M. Stanton, and opened the Stanton House, the first hotel in Port Lavaca, the new settlement established on the bay 3½ miles southwest by displaced Linnville residents.
Twenty-three settlers are known to have been killed in the Victoria-Linnville raid, including eight Blacks and one Mexican. There is evidence that this raid also was part of a scheme among Mexican Centralists to punish the citizens of Victoria and Linnville for providing Mexican Federalists a port and site for the short-lived provisional government of the Republic of the Rio Grande. The captured horses and plunder were evidently received by Centralist generals Valentín Canalizo and Adrián Woll and used in an invasion of Texas. Although this was the last great Comanche raid into the coastal settlements, Linnville never regained prominence and soon vanished in the wake of Port Lavaca's growth. The Victoria battle is commemorated by a historical marker on De León Plaza in downtown Victoria near the site of the Round Top House, the fortified home of colonist Plácido Benavides, which served as an improvised citadel against the attack. The site of Linnville is 3½ miles northeast of Port Lavaca on the bayfront, just off Farm Road 1090 in present Calhoun County.
Bibliography:
T. Lindsay Baker, Ghost Towns of Texas (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1986). Donaly E. Brice, The Great Comanche Raid (Austin: Eakin Press, 1987). John Henry Brown, Indian Wars and Pioneers of Texas (Austin: Daniell, 1880; reprod., Easley, South Carolina: Southern Historical Press, 1978). Calhoun County Historical Commission, Shifting Sands of Calhoun County, Texas (Port Lavaca, Texas, ca. 1980). Claude W. Dooley, comp., Why Stop? (Odessa: Lone Star Legends, 1978; 2d ed., with Betty Dooley and the Texas Historical Commission, Houston: Lone Star, 1985). Paul H. Freier, A "Looking Back" Scrapbook for Calhoun County and Matagorda Bay, Texas (Port Lavaca, Texas: Port Lavaca Wave, 1979). Roy Grimes, ed., 300 Years in Victoria County (Victoria, Texas: Victoria Advocate, 1968; rpt., Austin: Nortex, 1985). James L. Haley, Texas: An Album of History (Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1985). John J. Linn, Reminiscences of Fifty Years in Texas (New York: Sadlier, 1883; 2d ed., Austin: Steck, 1935; rpt., Austin: State House, 1986). Victor Marion Rose, History of Victoria (Laredo, 1883; rpt., Victoria, Texas: Book Mart, 1961). The Victoria Sesquicentennial "Scrapbook" (Victoria, Texas: Victoria Advocate, 1974).