Caney Creek Camp Meetings

Organized religion among the American settlers in Mexican Texas began with itinerant preachers who organized group gatherings called camp meetings.  No churches had been built in this sparsely settled wilderness, and the only religion allowed by the government was Catholicism.  Most of the immigrants were Protestants, although in order to acquire land grants they had all professed allegiance to the state church.

The first camp meeting in Austin’s Colony took place in September of 1834, organized by Methodist preacher and Texas resident John Wesley Kenney, and itinerant Methodist preacher Henry Stephenson.  The site they chose for their meeting was near a reliable spring in northern Austin County on a tributary of Caney Creek that had been a routine camp site on the old Spanish Orcoquisac Road that supplied the presidio and mission complex of that name on the lower Trinity River from 1754 to 1771.  A year later a similar meeting was held in which William Barrett Travis participated in his last church service and communion before he left for his destiny at the Alamo.  From 1885 to 1917 these Caney Creek camp meetings were one of the largest and most important religious events in Texas.  Click on the link below to learn the whole story.

Caney Creek Camp Meetings 

The Atascosito Road

The Atascosito Road was one of the two main roads to Texas used by Americans responding to the colonization efforts of empresarios Stephen Austin and Green DeWitt.  It and the Coushatta Trace led directly to San Felipe, the colonial capitol, where newcomers were required to register their presence, thus placing their names in the queue for a land grant.  The eastern part of this important early road was blazed in 1754 as a supply line for the new Orcoquisac complex, a presidio and mission on the lower Trinity River.  The full length of the road was used extensively during the decade following the Louisiana Purchase, to supply a Spanish garrison on the Trinity called Atascosito.  During the Republic years portions of this road fell into disuse as other routes were developed to connect the new settlements.  Today only a few miles of the original road that ran from La Bahia to the Sabine River remain in use.   Click below to read about the Atascosito road.

The Atascosito Road.  

The Twin Sisters

     They are among our most revered icons of the Texas Revolution.  These two cannons, made in Cincinnati especially for use in the struggle for independence from Mexico, served admirably as Sam Houston's only artillery in the Battle of San Jacinto.  For over a century, Texas history advocates have heatedly debated the details of these cannons.  Were they iron or brass?   Were they 4-pounders or 6-pounders?  And what happened to them?  Were they buried at Harrisburg?  Extensive archival research in 2014 and 2015 has revealed information that indicates the likely answers to these questions.  They were iron 6-pounders, and in addition to San Jacinto, they fought in the last battle of the Civil War at Palmetto Ranch and were given to the Mexican army in Matamoros, but later returned to Fort Brown.

     The detailed story of the Twin Sisters, along with that of all of the other artillery used in 1836 by both sides, is included in my book titled Cannons of the Texas Revolution.   Click on the following link to learn the full story of the Twin Sisters.

The Twin Sisters