San Augustine, TX - American Guide Series on Waymarking.com

The waymark coordinates are located at the San Augustine County Courthouse in downtown San Augustine, Texas.

Blasterz cannot fathom how such a deeply historic places San Augustine only merits 3 paragraphs in the WPA guide to Texas, but that's what it got.

From the WPA Guide to Texas:

"SAN AUGUSTINE, 141 m. (304 alt., 1,247 Pop.), is built on small red hills. Its houses, many of them old and of weathered pine, are set deep in yards smothered in oleanders, gardenias and mimosas. Vacant lots are a tangle of Cherokee roses. Around the wide, tranquil courthouse square, farmers and Negro farm hands gather to discuss the
crops. Sidewalks, and many of the houses, are tinged with the red earth. A few large white frame residences of Southern Colonial architecture crown the hilltops. The town developed from a settlement that grew around the Mission Nuestra Senora de los Dolores de los Ais (Mission of Our Lady of Sorrows of the Ais), which was re-established on Ayish
Bayou by the Marquis de San Miguel de Aguayo in 1721. Four years previously the mission had been founded somewhere within half a league west of the bayou, but, because of French colonial expansion, had been abandoned in 1719. The second mission remained active until 1773. In 1756, still uneasy about French intentions, the Spanish established
the Presidio de San Agustin de Ahumada (Fort of St. Augustine of Ahumada), here.

TOUR 2 383

The presidio was abandoned in 1771, the mission in 1773. The first Anglo-Americans came into the territory in 1818.

Though in 1890 a fire destroyed a large part of the town, some old buildings remain, sturdy and mellowed by the years. Several log houses nearly a century old are still occupied by descendants of the men who built them. The BLOUNT HOUSE (open by arrangement}, corner Ayish and Columbia Sts., was erected in 1839. A high, square, one-story frame building with two ells, it sprawls well back from the street. Its columned porch, arched main entrance and ornamental cornice are
typical of the period when it was erected by Colonel S. W. Blount, who was a signer of the Texas Declaration of Independence.

Three blocks .east of the courthouse square is the CARTWRIGHT HOUSE (open by arrangement) , a dignified two-story frame structure, also built in 1839, when it stood directly across the street from the University of San Augustine, a pioneer institution of learning incorporated June 5, 1837, a d active until the outbreak of the Civil War.

A cedar tree (L), at 145.2 m. t grows from the limb of a large chinaberry tree."

Book: Texas Page Number(s) of Excerpt: 382 Year Originally Published: 1940

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Date Logged Log User Rating   12/28/2017 Benchmark Blasterz visited it