Located on the Old San Antonio Road four miles east of the Angelina River and fourteen miles west of Nacogdoches, Douglass sits on the extreme northeast corner of the old Barr and Davenport grant called the San Patricio Ranch. Michael Costley, known as the Father of Douglass, arrived in Texas in the spring of 1832. In 1836, at age 27, he enlisted as a volunteer in the Texas Army and patrolled the San Antonio Road between the Angelina and Neches rivers. In September 1836, General Houston ordered Costley and soldiers into nearby Cherokee territory to monitor activities there, and a formal assignment soon followed. Expecting his proposed town to flourish, Costley had surveyor William Roark lay it out in a square and began selling lots. He and his partner Joseph S. Able owned the first general store, Costley & Able. A nearby river port on the Angelina shipped cotton to the Gulf, and a stagecoach line was established. Before the town could fully develop, Costley was killed in a gunfight on November 16, 1837, by W. R. D. Speight, the first District Clerk of Nacogdoches. The town was named for General Kelsey Harris Douglass, a prominent early settler and Republic of Texas Congressman. By 1840, it had a two-story stagecoach inn, two hotels, a jail, drugstore, post office, saloons, and a variety of shops. Its first church was established in 1837 with nine people at the first service. Devastating fires in 1943 and 1954 impeded its growth, but Douglass remained a significant gateway for travel, trade, and communications from west to east.