Site of Pattonia

The Pattons proved the river with cotton. The Handbook of Texas says that in 1844 they floated 192 bales on the flat-hulled Thomas J. Rusk to Sabine Pass, traded the cotton for supplies and opened a store at Pattonia, near the mouth of Dorr Creek. Robert Patton bought the river's first steamboat, the Angelina, in 1849. In the 1850s the port shipped cotton from nearby plantations, and one eyewitness recalled five riverboats tied up at once. Railroad building in the late 1870s and 1880s ended the traffic, and the settlement was abandoned by 1900.

What the plaque says

Site of Pattonia Nearby was the site of the riverport community of Pattonia (also called Patton's Landing), founded by Robert S. and Moses L. Patton in 1844. Pattonia was situated at a bend in the Angelina River on a tract of land patented to General Thomas J. Rusk. The Patton brothers moved to Texas from Georgia in 1835, with Moses serving as a courier for Rusk during the Texas War for Independence. Robert's daughter Harriet Ann would later marry Gen. Rusk's son, John Cleveland Rusk. By the 1840s, the Patton brothers, experienced riverboat pilots, decided to test the feasibility of navigating the Angelina River, using a flat-bottomed keelboat named the Thomas J. Rusk. Successful in their initial efforts, the Pattons purchased the steamboat Angelina and soon established regular commerce on the river between the new town of Pattonia and the Gulf of Mexico. Boats carried cotton downriver, while supplies were sent upstream to Pattonia, where they were unloaded and sent overland to Nacogdoches and other locations by wagon. Pattonia soon declined, however, and the Patton brothers turned their attention to other endeavors. Robert passed away in 1857 and Moses died in 1883. By the 1880s, boats no longer served the port community. Erosion of the river banks, lowering water levels, obstruction by fallen logs, accumulation of sandbars and other factors contributed to the demise of the port and made navigation on the Angelina River difficult. The emergence of dependable rail travel made Pattonia's river commerce obsolete. Today, nothing remains of this once vital link to river trade in east Texas. (2007)

Where it stands

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