Trinity Chamber

Sandwiched between two of Texas "great" rivers — the Trinity and the Neches
—

Trinity County’s rich history includes Na­tive
Americans, Spanish Explorers,

famed outlaws and ordinary, hardworking citizens.

The county is named after the mighty Trinity River,
which in turn was named

by Spanish explorer Alonzo de Leon, who reached it on
Holy Trinity Sunday

in 1690. He named it “Rio de la Trinidad” (River of the
Trinity) in honor of that day.

Once one of the chief thoroughfares of Texas, during
the 1800s and early

1900s, the Trinity River was a busy highway for steam
boats which

traveled from the waters of the Gulf of Mexico to
north-central Texas

where the cities of Dallas and Fort Worth were born.

Trinity County was originally a part of Houston County,
which had been created out of the massive Nacogdoches County by the
Republic of Texas in 1837. As settlements developed in the
south­western portion of Houston County, the distance between those
settlements and the county seat at Crockett was such that a petition
seeking the creation of a new county was submitted. On March 16, 1848
the petition was approved and a new county, named in honor of the
Trinity River, was organized in 1850.

According to A Brief History
by Elaina L. Puls, the archaeologi­cal
records of the area show that the area between the Trinity and Neches
rivers was occupied by Native Americans long before writ­ten record
which began when French and Spanish explorers arrived on the scene.

Folsom points have been discovered in this area and
among the earliest hunter-gatherer tribes identified to have lived
here are the Hainai, Neches, Nacono and Nabedache. With the arrival of
Euro­pean explorers, the native population dramatically and rapidly
de­clined when they were exposed to diseases such as measles and
chicken pox for the first time.

The remaining tribes united under a confederacy called
the Hasinais, which was a part of a larger group composed of other
confederacies called the Caddoes. Prior to European contact, the
natives of this area were all mound builders and while many of those
structures have been destroyed by pot hunters, some have survived
along the Trinity and Neches rivers.

The first recorded settler in Trinity County was Jesse
James, who arrived here in 1834. The uncle of the more famous western
out­laws, Frank and Jesse James, he settled along Alabama Creek. His
nephews are said to have visited him there frequently.

Once the county was organized in 1850, its first seat
of govern­ment was in the Sumpter community near present-day Groveton.
The name Sumpter was selected for the new community because it was the
elder Jesse James’ hometown. The first Post Office in the new county
also was established there.

Sumpter became a “boom town” when rumors spread that a
rail­road would soon be built there. The infamous Texas outlaw John
Wesley Hardin was a resident of Sumpter when he killed his first
person at the tender age of 16.

On Nov. 2, 1872, the Trinity County Courthouse suffered
the fate of many of the state’s early wooden government buildings —
it burned down. Fortunately, the county clerk at the time
had taken many of the court records home to update them, saving a part
of the county’s history for future generations.

Because the railroad never arrived, the destruction of
the court­house spelled the end for Sumpter. Many people had already
been dismantling their homes and business to move to other areas so on
May 30, 1873, the county seat was moved to Kaiser’s Prairie, a
community named after its first settler. However, when the county seat
was moved there, the community was renamed Trinity.

Today, all that remains of the once booming Sumpter is
a cemetery and historical markers. A stand of pines covers the old
townsite.

The seat of county gov­ernment did not remain in
Trinity for long. By the spring of 1874, the seat was moved to
Pennington where rumors were once again blooming concerning the
ar­rival of a railroad line. As before, the railroad was not built and
the county’s residents wanted a county seat in a more centralized
spot.

While a petition to have the county seat moved was once
again pending before the state legislature, the Pennington courthouse
was destroyed by fire.

The same county clerk who had saved county records from
the 1872 fire had once again moved many court files to his home. He
stated in a sworn affidavit that the sheriff had arrested some “very
bad characters” that day and he was sure they and their friends were
going to try to destroy the arrest warrants.

On Oct. 20, 1882 the county seat was officially located
in Groveton, where it remains today. According to local legend, when a
group of people wanted to establish a town in 1854, they asked the
oldest mem­ber of the group to name the town. The story goes that he
was sitting on a bench in the shade of a grove of Black­jack trees and
without hesi­tation said, “Grovetown.”

Prior to the Civil War, Trinity County’s economy was
based on cotton and it was the ninth largest cotton producing county
in Texas. After the war, during the pe­riod of Reconstruction, the
long leaf pine became the major commodity for all of the Deep East
Texas region with the Trinity County Lumber Co. dominating the
county’s economy un­til the 1 930s. At that time the company sold most
of their land to the U.S. Forest Service and the Davy Crockett
National Forest was established.

Today’s Trinity County Courthouse in Groveton