Native Americans Native Americans friendly to the settlers resided in East Texas before the
Kiowa,
Kickapoo,
Kichai,
Apache, and
Comanche relocated to the territory. These tribes hunted, farmed the land, and were adept traders. By 1772, they had settled on the
Brazos at
Waco and on the
Trinity upstream from present
Palestine. The Tawakoni branch of
Wichita Indians originated north of Texas, but migrated south into East Texas. From 1843 onward, the Tawakoni were part of treaties made by both the
Republic of Texas and the United States. On May 19, 1836, an alliance of Comanche, Kiowa,
Caddo, and Wichita attacked Fort Parker (Limestone County), killing and taking settlers captive. The survivors escaped to Fort Houston, which had been erected in Anderson County in 1835 as protection against Indians. Some early residents of Anderson County were related to
Cynthia Ann Parker, who was among the captives. In October 1838,
Gen. Thomas Jefferson Rusk conducted a raid against hostile Indians at Kickapoo, near
Frankston. This ended the engagements with the Indians in East Texas for that year.
Anglo settlement In 1826, empresario
David G. Burnet received a grant from the
Coahuila y Tejas legislature to settle 300 families in what is now Anderson County. Most of the settlers came from the southern states and
Missouri. Baptist leader
Daniel Parker and eight other men organized the
Pilgrim Predestinarian Regular Baptist Church in
Lamotte, Illinois in 1833. This entire group migrated to the Texas frontier, arriving in
Austins Colony in November 1833, After the Texas Revolution and the attack on
Fort Parker, Daniel Parker and some of the survivors moved to Fort Houston (Anderson County). They established a new community south of the fort.
Incorporation The First Legislature of the State of Texas formed Anderson County from
Houston County on March 24, 1846. The county was named for
Kenneth Lewis Anderson. Palestine was named the county seat. Anderson County voted for
secession from the Union. When the
American Civil War began, former Palestine district judge
Judge John H. Reagan served in the cabinet of the
Confederate government as postmaster general, being captured at the end of the war and spending 22 months in solitary confinement. During
Reconstruction, District Nine Court Judge Reuben A. Reeves, a resident of Palestine, was removed from office as "an obstruction to Reconstruction" in part because of his refusal to allow blacks to participate as jurors in the judicial process. In 1875, the
International – Great Northern Railroad placed its machine and repair shops and general offices in Palestine, causing the community to double in size over the next 5 years. For a time, it was a rough railroad town, dominated by male workers. White violence against blacks occurred in the county, most frequently by lynchings of black men. But in July 1910, at least 22 blacks were killed in white rioting near Slocum, a majority-black community, in what is called the
Slocum Massacre. Racial and economic tensions had been high in the post-Reconstruction era and southern states had
disenfranchised blacks and imposed
Jim Crow in furtherance of
white supremacy. Anderson County tied for 13th place in a list of the 25 American counties with the highest number of lynchings between 1877 and 1950 (all were located in the South). Oral tradition in the African-American community holds that as many as 200 blacks may have been killed in the massacre. An estimated 200 whites rioted and attacked blacks on the roads, in the fields, and in
Slocum on July 29–30, 1910. Many black homes were burned, and black families fled for their lives, having to abandon their property and assets. This town is about 20 miles east of the county seat at Palestine. In January 2016, the state installed a highway historical marker in Slocum to recognize this unprovoked white attack on the black community. It was part of a history of white violence against blacks. In 1926, the Humble Oil and Refining Company, in partnership with the Rio Bravo Company, started an exploration drilling program along Boggy Creek, in what turned our to be the Boggy Creek
salt dome. On March 19, 1927, the Elliott and Clark No. 1 encountered the
Woodbine Formation at a depth of and produced 62 barrels of oil per hour, but showed salt water after producing only 15,000 barrels. On November 10, 1927, the Elliott and Clark No. 2, 150 feet to the west, was completed as a gas well. On February 4, 1928, the first oil-producing well in Anderson County, the
Humble-Lizzie Smith No. 1, was completed, producing 80
BOPD. By May 1931, 80 wells had been drilled in the
Boggy Creek Oil Field, 6 of which produced gas, 33 oil, and 41 were dry holes. The Fairway Oil Field was discovered in 1960, and straddles the border of Anderson and Henderson Counties. Oil is produced from the
Lower Cretaceous James
Limestone member of the Pearsall
formation. The
Gus Engeling Wildlife Management Area was purchased by the state between 1950 and 1960, much of it formerly owned by Milze L. Derden. The area was renamed in 1952 for Gus A. Engeling, the first state biologist assigned to the area who was killed by a poacher on December 13, 1951. ==Geography==