Historical Marker

Early Jackson County

Edna, Jackson County · Texas
Erected 1968

The plaque's "cannibalistic" repeats a charge Anglo Texans used to justify killing the Karankawas; the Handbook says a ceremonial practice, common among Texas peoples, seems to have ended in the eighteenth century. In the early 1830s Lipan Apache and Tonkawa people also lived here, and night thefts of supplies led the militia to a skirmish on Sandy Creek in 1832. So many colonists came from Alabama that the district was called the "Alabama Settlement." In 1836 Urrea's troops burned many settlements, and returning families went without bread until the next year's harvest.

What the plaque says

Early Jackson County Organized, 1837; named for 7th president of U. S., Andrew Jackson. Early hunting grounds of the cannibalistic Karankawa Indians, this region was crossed in 1528 by shipwrecked Spaniard Cabeza de Vaca. French explorer La Salle founded the first settlement,iIl-fated Fort St. Louis, in 1685. Its site is said by some authorities to be Dimmitt's Point (21 miles SW.). Most of what is now Jackson County lay in Stephen F. Austin's land grant. The first town, "Santa Anna," was founded by six members of Austin's "Old 300" colonists in 1832. The town, later named "Texana," was the predecessor of Edna. (1968)

Where it stands

28.97833, -96.64650 · Directions

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