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The
Old Stone Fort
by Archie P. McDonald, PhD |
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In
the spring of 1779 a later-day Moses named
Antonio Gil Y'Barbo led some displaced persons back to East
Texas to found the community of Nacogdoches.
They had formerly lived in western Louisiana and eastern Texas near Spanish missions,
but a change in government policy had forced them to move to San
Antonio in 1774.
As soon as they arrived in San
Antonio, these East Texas Spaniards petitioned for permission to return eastward.
Their request granted, Y'Barbo led them to the banks of the Trinity River where
they established the community of Bucareli. Four years of floods and trouble with
the Comanche convinced them to move eastward, where they founded Nacogdoches.
Soon after leading his wanderers to the valley of LaNana and Banita Bayous,
Y'Barbo erected a Stone House on the northeast corner of town square. It was private
property, but because of Y'Barbo's civil
and militia authority the Stone House took on a public nature it never lost. There
he conducted private and government business, so it became the civic center of
the community.
When Simon Herrera came to East
Texas in 1806 to negotiate the Neutral Ground agreement with General James
Wilkinson, he headquartered in Y'Barbo's
Stone House. In 1813, the Army of the North led by Augustus Magee and Bernardo
Gutierrez de Lara proclaimed Texas independent from Spain while occupying the
house, and within its walls A. Mower set type for the Gaceta
de Tejas, the first -- if short lived -- newspaper in Texas,
before moving on to defeat in the southwest.
James Long led Americans
across the Sabine
River in 1819 in violation of the Adams-Onis
Treaty, and again used the Stone House as the venue to declare Texas independent,
once more unsuccessfully. The story was repeated by Haden Edwards and the Fredonians
in the 1820s, again unsuccessfully. |
| | The
Old Stone Fort
Postcard courtesy rootsweb.com/~txgenweb// postcards/Index.html |
Y'Barbo's
Stone House hosted meetings of the Nacogdoches Committee of Public Safety and
the selection of representatives to the conventions and the Consultation during
the Texas Revolution and it witnessed the Battle
of Nacogdoches in 1832. There mustered soldiers for service in the Civil War.
Towards the end of the nineteenth century, the Stone House, by now known as the
Stone Fort though it never served as such, fell on bad times. By then it sheltered
a saloon and was consider quite unsavory. Still it was a shock to the community
when the Perkins brothers razed the old rock house and erected a modern business
building.
The Cum Concilio Club, a local women's group, salvaged the
remains of the Stone House and stored them on Washington Square. Later some were
used in a building on the public school campus. In 1936, a replica of the Old
Stone Fort was located on the campus of Stephen F. Austin State University, and
visitors can drop by and get a good idea of what the first building in Nacogdoches
looked like.
All Things
Historical
MAY 13-19, 2001 Columns
Published by permission.
(Archie P. McDonald
is Director of the East Texas Historical Association and author or editor of over
20 books on Texas)
See East
Texas | Nacogdoches,
Texas | |
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