Site of New Kentucky
Tomball, Harris County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Established before 1831. A thriving town until its trade was captured by the present city of Houston, established 30 miles away in 1836. Abandoned about 1840.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Founded before 1831 while Texas was still Mexican territory, New Kentucky briefly thrived as a trading settlement on the coastal prairie. Its fortunes collapsed when nearby Houston was laid out in 1836 and captured the region's commerce, and the town was abandoned by about 1840. Today only the marker recalls a place that once bustled with frontier trade.
Why it matters
It captures how quickly frontier towns rose and vanished as a new city's founding could redraw an entire region's economic map almost overnight.
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Related events
- · Founding of Houston (1836)
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Abraham Roberts Homesite
Tomball, TX
Abraham Roberts (1773–1850), a Georgia native, settled on Spring Creek about 1829 at a crossroads in the thinly settled community of New Kentucky. On April 16, 1836, Sam Houston's retreating army paused here, uncertain whether their general would keep withdrawing east. When soldiers asked Roberts—standing at his gate—the way to Harrisburg, he pointed southeast, a great shout went up, and Houston took that road, leading to the decisive victory at San Jacinto five days later.
Roberts Cemetery
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Abraham Roberts, a member of Stephen F. Austin's Colony, came to Texas in the late 1820s and named his settlement New Kentucky; by the 1840s it had become the German-settled Spring Creek community. His own burial around 1850 is thought to be the first here, and the ground grew into a community cemetery holding the Roberts, Schultz, and Montgomery families. A nearby separate burial ground is believed to have been set aside for enslaved people of the Montgomery plantation, and the graveyard remains in use today.
Samuel McCarley Homesite
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Samuel McCarley, his wife Celia, and their ten children settled on Spring Creek in 1831, and by 1836 their home sat on a well-traveled road between Washington-on-the-Brazos and Harrisburg. On April 15, 1836, Sam Houston's Texas Army arrived at dusk and, over one hungry night, consumed the family's cattle, corn, and bacon and burned some four thousand fence rails for fuel. The next day Houston took the Harrisburg road and, on April 21, won independence at San Jacinto; decades later the state paid the widowed Celia $460 for the damage.
Rose Hill Methodist Church Building
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