Early Settlers of Piney Point

Piney Point, named for a grove of tall pines at a southward bulge of Buffalo Bayou, was a landmark for early Texan colonists. The San Felipe Trail first followed the south bank of Buffalo Bayou as a primitive path. John D. Taylor arrived in Texas in 1822 and received a league of land here from empresario Stephen F. Austin in 1824. Taylor and his wife Maria built a log cabin near a spring about 1000 feet east of this site, where they lived with a daughter and two servants as among the first settlers in the frontier between San Felipe and Galveston Bay. After less than two years, they sold their land and moved to the new village of Harrisburg, where both died of yellow fever in 1829. The Piney Point league later passed through several owners until Buckman Canfield, a veteran of the Texas War of Independence, bought the part containing Taylor's homesite in 1838. Canfield and his wife, Harriet Putnam, had come to Texas from Oswego, New York, and ran a frontier inn for San Felipe Trail travelers along with a farm and cattle ranch. After Buckman died in 1844, Harriet married Benjamin George and built a millpond and a water-powered sawmill below the spring. The millpond still exists 1000 feet northeast of the intersection of Fondren Drive and Woodway. Improved as a wagon road by Austin's colony in 1830, the San Felipe Trail became an important cotton export route from San Felipe to the port at Harrisburg and, after 1886, to the new town of Houston. The trail lay a quarter of a mile south of this site near modern Westheimer Road.

Piney Point Village, Texas · United States