User:Narthring/Preston, Texas

Preston, Texas also known as Preston Bend was a former town located on the Red River that has now been covered by the waters of Lake Texoma. It grew up in the late 1800s at an intersection of several military and trade roads but lost prominence after the the MK&T railroad passed the town to the east.

The area was also known as Coffee Bend or Washita Bend.

Near current town of Pottsboro, Grayson County, Texas.

Geography
Preston was located in the river valley south of the confluence of the Red and Washita Rivers in Texas on its border with the Indian Territory and later state of Oklahoma. A few miles east of the Cross Timbers. On the upper Red River, above the Great Raft logjam.

The Oklahoma side of the river was a relatively flat sand-covered plain and terraces sloping gently to the river. The Texas side was a bluff 100-110 feet high above the river's low water mark.

On a high bluff on Washita Bend overlooking the Red River.

Early settlement
Before European settlement the general area of Preston had been occupied by the Caddo Indians. One of the first American settlers in the area was John Hart, who cultivated land at the bend possibly before 1826. He left the area just after 1830 after being attacked by Indians during a trapping expedition on the Washita River.

During the 1830s the United States relocated the Five Civilized Tribes to the Indian Territory, on the north side of the Red River. The Dodge-Leavenworth Expedition of explored the area in 1834 and just west of the mouth of the Washita River is the site of Leavenworth Camp. Catlin took some of his famous Indian pictures from this camp. In the fall of 1838 John Hart returned to the Washita Bend area with two partners. They cleared and fenced 17 acres and built three cabins. In 1838 the partnership dissolved and Hart took sole possession of the land. He leased the land to a tenant.

Holland Coffee and Glen Eden
Holland Coffee and Silas Colville (1804-1844) created Coffee, Colville and Company to establish a trading post on the Red River. After three attempts to establish a trading post on the Red River farther upstream they succeeded in establishing one in the Washita Bend area. They occupied the area of Washita Bend after John Hart's tenant was killed by Indians. Hart later sued Coffee for the land, but lost.

Holland Coffee was elected in 1837 to the Texas congress.

Holland Coffee negotiated a peace treaty between the Republic of Texas and the Waco, Tawakoni, Kichai and Towash(Pawnee) Indians on September 2, 1838 at a Shawnee village near the mouth of the Washita River.

Preston grew up around the trading post established by Silas Cheek Colville and Holland Coffee.

Holland Coffee married Sophia Suttonfield Aughinbaugh in 1839 and Coffee and Colville dissolved their partnership after the marriage. Afterwards Colville became associated with James A. Caldwell at Shawneetown, near modern Denison, Texas. Colville killed Hart in Warren, Texas in the Spring 1841 in an argument over the land at Washita Bend. Colville was acquitted but murdered in 1844 by unknown assailants. His place of death and burial are also unknown.

When Holland Coffee married Sophia he resided at his trading post in a 100 foot square log stockade on the Red River. The stockade enclosed several huts and cabins. In 1843 Coffee began building Glen Eden two miles west of his trading post for his wife. It was completed

Holland Coffee killed on October 1, 1846.

Preston road
Surveyor William H. Hunt helped survey the road from ?.

Preston was situated at the link between the Texas Road and the Preston Road.

Preston road was 100 miles long, from Preston to the Trinity River at Dallas.

1840-1841 Colonel William G. Cooke made a military road from Austin to Coffee's trading house on the Red River.

Fort Preston
The Republic of Texas commissioned Colonel Cook to make a supply post in the area, known as Fort Preston after Captain William Gilwater Preston. In 1840 Cook was in charge of a company of men there. Coffee and other settlers were thinking about leaving the area before Cooke arrived. The village around Fort Preston grew up to be known as Preston, Texas. Fort Preston was established 80 yards west of the eastern bend in the river, on a bluff about 40-50 feet above the river. Some of the buildings at Fort Preston were made of bricks made in the area.

The name of the town is thought to come from Capt. William Gilwater Preston, a member of the military road expedition of 1840-1841. This seems to be doubtful today and the origin of the name is obscure.

The town
Preston developed in the area around Coffee's trading house and was a considerable town in 1845 when William H. Hunt completed its town plat survey. The municipal government was established in 1851 with Tom Jackson as the first mayor. The settlement was the terminus of the Indian Nation's Texas Road and the beginning of what became the Preston Road. Situated on the Shawnee Trail.

Army depot
Cooke established a temporary military post near Preston.

United States Army operated a depot to supply the Fifth Infantry from here.

Army depot operated from 1851 to 1853.

Army depot under the command of Lt. Thomas C. English.

Preston Supply Depot commanded by Bvt. Maj. W. F. Wood.

Albert Sidney Johnston and the Second Cavalry came through Preston in 1855.

The Civil War
Sophia was the most prominent member of Preston during the Civil War.

Ferrys
Six miles west of Colberts was Thompson's Ferry, ran by James George Thompson, first chief justice in Grayson County. Thompson's home became the first post office and courthouse in the county.

Rock Bluff
The Rock Bluff marked the ford of an old Indian trail on the Red River.

The Rock Bluff marked the return route of Captain Randolph B. Marcy's expedition from Santa Fe to Fort Smith in 1849.

Cattle crossing
Important wagon crossing before 1850, with over 1000 wagons crossing there in a year.

Rock Bluff Ferry
Holland Coffee, George Butts, and Sloan Love operated ferries in the area.

Rock Bluff Ferry near mouth of Washita River near Preston.

In the late 1830s James Tyson operated a ferry at the Rock Bluff. His ferry was little more than a log raft.

Later two partners owned this ferry, Jim Shannon and Bud Randolph.

In about 1853 Ben Colbert opened up his ferry to cash in on the California gold rush.

Log raft ferry service available at the trading post in 1839.

Buildings
Masonic lodge established in 1852.

Post office established in 1856.

Post office operated from 1880 to 1914.

Had general stores.

Steamboats on the Red River were able to navigate up the river to Preston.

Preston had a steamboat landing.

Preston had stores and a blacksmith shop.

California road
Preston was the location where the California Trail crossed into Texas.

Railroad
In 1853 Congress funded an exploration of the best route west of the Mississippi for a transcontinental railroad. In February 1854 an expedition of 75 men led by Capt. John Pope surveyed a route along the 32nd parallel from New Mexico to Preston, Texas. Secretary of War Jefferson Davis favored this path, though tabled until after the Civil War. Afterwards this route was abandoned.

Steamboat
Supplying the military posts in the area was difficult. Idea to expand the army depot by steamboat was considered. Abandoned in 1853 because of the difficulties of navigating the upper Red River and the logjam.

Decline of Preston
In 1847 the Texas legislature ordered a road to be built from Preston to Sherman.

Butterfield trail
The Butterfield Overland Mail stage route, serving between Saint Louis, Missouri to San Franciso, California, began operation in 1857. The line ran across the Indian Territory from Fort Smith, Arkansas to the Red River at Colbert's Ferry, a few miles east of Preston. The stage line had decided to bypass Preston as the traditional crossing on the Red River. Colbert's ferry became a more popular crossing over the Red River as Sherman And McKinney developed. In 1857 Sherman was very small, made up of only two or three small stores. Much of the brick and material came from older buildings at Preston. By 1871 14 stage lines operating through Sherman.

MK&T Railroad
After the Civil War the peace treaty between the United States and the Five Civilized Tribes allowed for a railroad to be built north and south across the Indian Territory. This railroad, the Missouri, Kansas and Texas, crossed the Red River near Colbert's Ferry to the east of Preston in 1871. By this time Preston had began to decline and was largely abandoned.

20th century
Remained a rural community.

in the 1900s Preston had a public school system, 2 churches, a cotton gin, and a cemetery on the hill overlooking the town.

in the 1930s the town had about 20 residents.

New Preston
New Preston developed more centrally within the bend.

Lake Texoma
United States Army Corps of Engineers bought all the land in the area in the late 1930s for Lake Texoma.

After filling Lake Texoma only the Preston cemetery is left.

Today
Population was 325 in 2000.

Pew pew pew
around 1849 three hundred barrels of whisky were sold annually at Preston, just across Red River in Texas and above the mouth of the Washita. 

Chihuahua trail ran through here.

After Cooke established his military post the town became known as Preston or Preston Bend.

In 1845 over a thousand wagons crossed the river that year.

Randolph B. Marcy and Lt. Nathaniel Michler came through Preston in 1849.

Randolph B. Marcy and John Pope came through in 1854.

Not long after 1846, James Tyson, of North Carolina, whose wife was Charlotte Love, daughter of Henry Love of the Chickasaw Nation, owned a ferry at Rock Bluff. Already well-to-do as a slave owner, James Tyson's wealth increased from the proceeds of his ferry and from the products of his extensive plantation that lay in the low valley opposite Rock Bluff, on the north side of Red River in the Chickasaw Nation (now Oklahoma). One day in talking to a party of Mormons who were traveling through the Indian Territory on their way to Utah, Mr. Tyson learned there were a number of carpenters among them. Finding them anxious to make expenses and save money by plying their trade as they traveled along, he engaged them to build a residence for him about two miles from his ferry. They proved themselves skilled artisans for when Mr. Tyson's home was completed, it exhibited the finest workmanship, walls of heavy, hand hewed logs closely fitted at the corners, and hand dressed flooring and other finishings. The house was two stories in height facing west, tall stone chimneys standing at either of its gable ends, and a hall leading from the front door past two large rooms on either side to the two-story wing extending in an L to the rear. Mrs. Tyson herself took great interest in her new home, planting flowering shrubs and trees around it. For many years it was known as the most substantial and beautiful place in that section of the country not only by the neighboring planters but also by travelers along the Texas Road passing within a few yards of the front door.

After the death of Mr. Tyson, in 1857, his wealthy widow, fine looking and respected for her dignity and character, married Nathan Coffee, of Preston. Upon his death a short time later, Mrs. Coffee undertook the management of her own affairs in which she proved herself a capable business woman. She was rich in slaves, the quarters, some distance to the rear of her residence, being a little village in itself, with its main street lined on either side by a row of log cabins where scores of negro slaves laughed and sang and played after their day's work was done. Large herds of cattle and horses belonging to Mrs. Coffee ranged the woods and prairies on either side of the Lower Washita Rivers.6 Today one can stand on an eminence on the Texas side of Red River above the Rock Bluff and gain a sweeping view of the beautiful valley across the river, in present Bryan County. Such a view takes in that portion of the Red River Valley in Oklahoma, now known as the "Coffee Bend Country," recalling the days when Charlotte Love (Tyson) Coffee ruled its fortunes.7

During the days of the Texas Republic, Preston below the mouth of the Washita, in Texas, and near the Rock Bluff, was the trading and social center for a wide stretch of country on both sides of the river, including the Chickasaw plantations as far down as the mouth of Island Bayou. With the discovery of gold in California in 1849, traffic and travel was diverted from Preston to Sherman, the county seat of Grayson County, Texas. A few years later, increasing emigration crossed Red River at Colbert's Ferry, located almost due north of Sherman and about six miles, by the meanders of the river, below Rock Bluff.

6Information from Mrs. Jessie R. Moore, of Oklahoma City, granddaughter, of Mrs. Charlotte Love Tyson.

7Nathan Coffee was probably a brother of William Coffee who had located a trading house at the site of Preston (Fort Preston), Texas. It is said that William Coffee came down from Fort Gibson to that location in 1834. This was the same year that the Leavenworth Expendition set out from Fort Gibson for the Wichita Village by way of the Lower Washita to the upper Red River Country. The bend of the river at the Rock Bluff on the Texas side was first known as Coffee's Bend. In later Texas history, however, it was referred to as Preston Bend.

see also Coffee family history

see also Savage Frontier: Rangers, Riflemen, and Indian Wars in Texas By Stephen L. Moore Published by University of North Texas Press ISBN 1574412280, 9781574412284 

Preston (Texas), Salina (Kansas), and Denver (Colorado) railroad

http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/hvg14 and http://www.centerplace.org/history/misc/soc/soc39.htm

Sophia
Holland Coffee married Sophia Suttonfield Aughinbaugh in 1839

Sophia was a native of Indiana in her early 20's.

Sophia had been married once before.

When he married Sophia Holland Coffee had a log stockade on the Red River.

Coffee built Glen Eden for Sophia.

Sophia married Major George Butts after Holland Coffee died; marriage only lasted a short time.

Sophia married Judge James Porter in 1856.

Sophia was the most prominent member of Preston during the Civil War.

Camp Lookout near Georgetown, Grayson County, Texas.

Camp Lookout was organized by Quantrill three miles south of Preston. On

Sloan Love, a Chickasaw, operated a ferry at the mouth of the Washita River. A blacksmith shop was opposite his ferry. http://digital.library.okstate.edu/chronicles/v009/v009p300.html

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Washita Bend Coffee Bend Fort Preston Silas Cheek Colville Holland Coffee Rock Bluff Rock Bluff Ferry Preston Schools? Lt. Thomas C. English Colonel William G. Cooke Bvt. Maj. W. F. Wood Nathan Coffee William Coffee Charlotte Love Tyson Camp Lookout