John Taylor's Piney Point League

In 1824, colonial empresario Stephen F. Austin received from the government of Mexico the authority to administer public lands. Most early grants were for cotton plantations along the Brazos and Colorado Rivers, but a few were for timber prospects along Buffalo Bayou. Stock raisers and industrialists could expect grants of a league of land, 4,428 acres, or more. John D. Taylor arrived in Texas in 1822 with his wife, Maria, and in 1824 was granted a league of land that included the southern half of the modern day Memorial Villages. They built a log cabin close to a spring south of Buffalo Bayou, near what is now Windermere subdivision, and north of a prominent landmark called Piney Point. The couple were the first residents of western Harris County. He became disenchanted with his new property, perhaps because the bayou at that location was not deep enough to transport timber products downstream. By 1825, he sold the land, and the couple left the area for Harrisburg, where both died of yellow fever in 1829. Downstream, where the bayou was deeper, John Richardson Harris established the town of Harrisburg in 1826 and built a sawmill. He died in 1829 while travelling to New Orleans to purchase a steam engine for the mill. His heirs were shipping lumber from that port to Mexico by 1831. Harrisburg was burned in 1836 by Santa Anna's Mexican Army during the Texas Revolution.

Piney Point Village, Texas · United States