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Archiver > Southern-Trails > 2002-07 > 1028164136


From: "Coffee" <>
Subject: Re: [SouthernTrails] Migration lower AL to East Texas
Date: Wed, 31 Jul 2002 20:12:24 -0500


The earliest Anglo-American immigrants to Texas were fugitives from
justice in 1811 and landed at Pecan Point on the Red River near a buffalo
crossing. Later, sutlers for the U.S. Army during the War of 1812 occupied
Pecan Point. The Anglo-Americans came down the mighty Mississippi River
and up the Red River to Pecan Point in what is now Red River County, Texas.
The point was earlier known to the French explorers as "Pointe aux
Pecanques". It is known, however, that previously it was the site of a
Caddoan Indian group called the "Nachitoch". The site is als know as the
Kiometia Mounds, named for the remains of the Caddoan Indians. Later in the
1875, a ferry was placed at Pecan Point and was named Hook's Ferry after
the owner, B.W.Hooks. More notable names that arrived at Pecan Point were:
Nathaniel Robbins, 1813; James Clark, 1813 (founder of Clarksville, Texas)
Freeman Smalley, 1819; Hardy and Clairborne Wright, 1816-1819; John Fowler,
1819; Thomas Williams, 1819; Robert Andrews, 1824; Wyatt Hanks, 1820; and
Richard Ellis, 1834.
Pecan Point was the oldest Anglo-American settlement in Texas and was
first permanently settled in 1816. Charles Pool and Walter Burkham were the
first settlers followed closely by Clairborne Wright on the side-wheeler
known as "The Pioneer". Pecan Point was located on the Red River as far as
a side wheeler could navigate except in periods of flood. The site is now
located northeast of Paris, Texas near the present community of Kiometia,
Texas. The flatboat called The Pioneer was used from New Orleans to Pecan
Point. The Pioneer sank in the red River in the 1850s. Historians found some
of the remains of The Pioneer in the Red River .
Immigrants disembarked at Fulton Arkansas and made the track on foot
to Pecan Point when the Red River could not be navigated further upstream.
The Great Raft on the Red River downstream of present day Shreveport LA
prevented navigation further upstream by 1833 and raised the water level of
the Sufur River to a degree that it could be navigated to the south shore of
Caddo Lake at Swanson's Landing. Immigrants to Texas then turned up the
Sulfur River to Swanson's Landing on Caddo Lake was thus the first port of
entry into Texas. One side of Swanson's property joined Texas and the United
States. The harbor was a comfortable depth for large riverboats. While the
Cherokees and Caddoes were on the warpath in Northeast Texas , Swanson's
Landing had the protection of the Texas Militia commanded by Hugh McLeod at
Port Caddo.
On February 12, 1869, the palatial side-wheeler, The "Mittie Stephens"
burned and sank at Swanson's Landing. Out of 107 passengers and crew (not
knowing they were within wading distance from shore) 61 men, women and
children perished. After the removal of The Great Raft in 1873 and the
shifting of river traffic to the boomtown of Jefferson, Texas, the demise of
Swanson's Landing as a river port was inevitable.

The 1990 census revealed that most of the land at Swanson's Landing still
belonged to his descendants.

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