Matagorda County
Bay City, Matagorda County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Early home of the Karankawa Indians. Landing place of LaSalle in 1685. Settled 1822-1836 by colonists of Stephen F. Austin. The municipality of Matagorda organized under the Mexican Government on March 6, 1834. Became on March 17, 1836, Matagorda County, which was organized in July 1837. Matagorda, was the county seat, 1837-1894, Bay City since 1894. In Memory Of James Cummins, Hosea H. League, Elias R. Weightman, Seth Ingram, Horatio Chriesman, William Selkirk, early settlers. Mary S. Wrightman Helms, the first woman teacher in Texas. Ira Ingram, Silas Densmore, members of the Convention of 1832. R.R. Royals, Ira L. Lewis, Charles Wilson, Delegates to the Consultation. Bailey Hardeman, Samuel Rhodes Fisher, signers of the Declaration of Independence. George M. Collingsworth and the men who served under him during thr struggle for Texas Independence. A.C. Horton, Lieutenant Govenor of Texas. The citizens of early Matagorda County who contributed to the economic, cultural, and spiritual development. Matagorda County has contributed to the development of Texas culture. The pioneer woman teacher Mary S. Wrightman Helms,1829; an early newspaper The Matagorda Bulletin, 1837; First Episcopal Church, 1839; first request for promotion of free school, that of Ira Ingram, 1837. Erected by the State of Texas 1936
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
This corner of the Texas coast was home to the Karankawa people and the landing place of the French explorer La Salle in 1685. Colonists of Stephen F. Austin settled the area between 1822 and 1836, and the municipality of Matagorda organized under Mexican rule in 1834 before becoming Matagorda County in the new Republic of Texas. Erected by the state in 1936 for Texas's centennial, the marker honors early settlers, delegates to the conventions that declared independence, and Mary S. Wightman Helms, remembered as the first woman teacher in Texas.
Why it matters
Few places compress so much of Texas's layered past — Indigenous, French, Spanish-Mexican, and Anglo-American — into a single county's origins.
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Related people
- · René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle
- · Stephen F. Austin
- · Mary S. Wightman Helms
- · Ira Ingram
- · Bailey Hardeman
Related events
- · La Salle's landing, 1685
- · Texas Revolution
- · Organization of Matagorda County, 1837
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Matagorda Cemetery
Matagorda, TX
Founded around 1829 as part of Stephen F. Austin's colony, Matagorda Cemetery is among the oldest burial grounds in Texas, its weathered stones chronicling the hardships of coastal frontier life. Those interred include victims of the 1862 yellow fever epidemic, soldiers of the Texas Revolution and Civil War, Karankawa people, and Samuel Rhoads Fisher, a signer of the Texas Declaration of Independence.
Ira Ingram
Matagorda County, TX
Vermont-born Ira Ingram cast his lot with Texas in its revolutionary years, serving as the first alcalde of the Matagorda municipality in 1834 and, two years later, as the first Speaker of the House in the Congress of the new Republic of Texas. An early champion of public schooling, he died in 1837, barely outliving the republic's founding. His grave marks the passing of a founding-generation Texan.
John Foster
Richmond, TX
Born in South Carolina in 1757, John Foster pushed west across the Appalachians around 1781 to the Spanish-held Natchez District, where he became a landowner, founded the town of Washington, and helped establish Jefferson College. In 1822 he joined the Texas frontier as one of Stephen F. Austin's "Old Three Hundred," receiving an 11,600-acre grant in what is now Fort Bend County. On Christmas Day 1835 he signed the Columbia Resolutions urging Texas independence, then retired to Mississippi, where he died in 1837.
Vienna (Cheney Settlement)
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Vienna traces to the Republic of Texas era, when Maryland native John Cheney settled the west bank of the Navidad River in 1830 on a spread that once topped 7,000 acres. As the Cheneys sold off land, German, Austrian, and Czech immigrants poured in, and an 1873 post office named the place Vienna for the Austrian capital, complete with school, stores, and a cotton gin. A 1940 flood, closing businesses, and a new highway scattered the community, leaving Vienna Baptist Church as its last standing building.