Old Matagorda Post Office
Matagorda County, Matagorda County, Texas
Marker Inscription
This structure was built prior to 1872 on a town lot purchased by Cyrus R. Sharp in 1837 located several blocks east of this site. Constructed of hand-cut lumber and held together with wooden pegs, the building housed only a general store before postmaster Andrew August Duffy added the Matagorda post office to its function in 1882. High water marks noticeable along the interior walls are believed to be the result of storm and flood damage. The structure was moved to this location and renovated following the opening of a new post office building in 1964. (1993)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Built before 1872 of hand-cut lumber pegged together without nails, this structure stood on a Matagorda town lot first purchased by Cyrus R. Sharp in 1837. It served as a general store until postmaster Andrew August Duffy added the town's post office to its duties in 1882. High-water marks still visible inside testify to the storms and floods of the Gulf coast; the building was moved and restored after a new post office opened in 1964.
Why it matters
A humble store-turned-post-office shows how coastal Texas towns wove commerce and federal mail service into a single community institution — and how they endured the sea's regular assaults.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Cyrus R. Sharp
- · Andrew August Duffy
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Early Texas Freighting
Matagorda, TX
Before railroads reached Texas, everything a frontier settlement needed—flour, tools, munitions, trade goods—moved on the backs of ox and mule teams driven by teamsters who braved raids, bandits, and brutal weather. One of the few regular runs linked Austin and Matagorda, wagons rolling out on the 1st and 15th of each month across six counties. Loads grew from crude 15-foot wooden carts with prickly-pear-greased hubs to two-ton "Prairie Schooners," and caravans could stretch from five wagons to a hundred and fifty, circling into a defensive corral when attacked. The coming of the "Iron Horse" in 1853 began the freighter's slow disappearance.
City of Matagorda
Matagorda County, TX
Planned in the 1820s and founded in 1829 by proprietors including Stephen F. Austin, Matagorda rose near the mouth of the Colorado River to become the third-largest town in Texas by 1834. It served as county seat and an early hub of schools, churches and printing presses in the Republic era. Gulf storms in 1854 and 1875 battered the coastal town, checking the growth of what had been a leading Texas port.
The Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1862
Matagorda, TX
A leading Gulf port, Matagorda thrived on cotton shipped down the Colorado River, and during the Civil War it became a busy channel for Confederate blockade runners slipping past Union ships. That same wartime traffic likely carried the Aedes aegypti mosquito into the wetland port, and in the fall of 1862 the yellow fever it spread ravaged the town. From late September to late November, the epidemic is estimated to have killed as much as a third of the population, filling Matagorda Cemetery and claiming enslaved residents and soldiers whose names largely went unrecorded.
Buckeye
Markham, TX
In the early 1900s land promoters lured northern families to Texas with promises of warm weather and fertile soil, and Buckeye — named for the founders' native Ohio — was one such planned town. Dr. Ambrose Plotner and John Stoddard bought the old Kuykendall pasture in 1902, laid out a vast irrigation canal, secured a railroad right-of-way, and platted streets named for citrus and figs. Despite a school, a post office, and hopes of an oil strike in the 1930s, the town gradually declined, its post office closing in 1971 with only a few houses left today.