HistoricSiteMarkers
Early RepublicReconstruction & Gilded Age

Moscow

Moscow, Polk County, Texas

Marker Inscription

Settled by David Green, during era of the Republic of Texas. First post office established under name of Green's in 1847. Changed to Moscow in 1853. Incorporated in 1856. Was stage stop on the Nacogdoches- Liberty Road. Site of several famous schools. Has had free school system since 1851. A cannery for vegetables and fruit and Bible column factory (making architectural pillars) were early industries. In 1881 became important railroad town. Its seven-mile Moscow, Camden & San Augustine is one of the shortest railroads in Texas.

Erected by Texas Historical Commission

The Story

Settled by David Green during the days of the Republic of Texas, this Polk County town opened its first post office as Green's in 1847, renamed Moscow in 1853, and incorporated in 1856 as a stage stop on the Nacogdoches-Liberty Road. Proud of its schools, Moscow ran a free school system as early as 1851 and hosted early industries from a cannery to a factory making architectural pillars. Its arrival as a railroad town in 1881 brought the tiny Moscow, Camden & San Augustine, one of the shortest railroads in Texas.

Why it matters

Moscow traces the arc of a Texas town from Republic-era frontier settlement to railroad crossroads, with an unusually early commitment to public schooling.

Own a business near here? Add it to the map.

Related people

  • · David Green

Themes & tags

Nearby & related markers

Site of the Town of Bevilport

Jasper vicinity, TX

Established by John Bevil, Bevilport was an important river navigation point from 1830 to 1860 and gave its name to the municipality first organized in 1834. It served as a mail station in 1835, was county seat of Jasper County from 1836 to 1837, and was incorporated in 1837. A business and social center on the Angelina River trade, the town thrived until the Civil War.

Site of Pattonia

Woden, TX

Founded in 1844 by riverboat pilots Robert and Moses Patton, this vanished port sat at a bend of the Angelina River on land patented to Texas Revolution general Thomas J. Rusk. The brothers proved the river navigable with a keelboat, then bought the steamboat Angelina and ran regular trade, sending cotton downstream toward the Gulf and hauling supplies up to be wagoned overland to Nacogdoches. Silting sandbars, fallen logs and dropping water levels doomed the enterprise, and the coming of the railroads finished it; today nothing at all remains of Pattonia.

Stage Coach Inn

Crockett, TX

Joseph D. Rice, Sr., who came to Texas in 1828 during the last years of Mexican rule, built this house in the piney woods of East Texas. By 1838, under the Republic of Texas, it had become a designated stopping place on the stage road running from old Nacogdoches down to Crockett. The State of Texas marked the site in 1936, its centennial year.

Read's Opening

Crockett, TX

This broad prairie was a favored nineteenth-century route to and from the Trinity River before Robert Newton Read and his wife Susan moved here from Arkansas by 1850, giving the landscape its name. The Reads farmed the opening, bought land, ran commercial ventures in Crockett, and donated ground for an African American Presbyterian church east of town. Though the family moved on to Mineola in 1876, Read's Opening remains woven into Houston County's history.