DUANE
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Duane's take
The way I heard it told, this comes straight from the marker standing at the birthplace of the city of Kaufman; let me pass it along to you. Way back in 1840, a man named Wm. P.
King gathered up forty pioneers, forty souls willing to pack everything they owned and follow him west out of Holly Springs, Mississippi. Now, that took a particular kind of nerve, because where they were headed wasn't even Texas yet, not the Texas we know. It was the Republic of Texas, and the land they planted their boots on fell within Nacogdoches County.
The country out there was not empty, not by a long measure. Caddo, Cherokee, Delaware, and Kickapoo Indians roamed that area, and King's people knew it. So they didn't just build homes; they built a fort first.
Log cabins raised up inside its walls, each one a small wager that tomorrow was worth the trouble of buildin' for it. They called the place King's Fort, and the settlement that grew up around it went by Kingsboro, or (if you were already thinking ahead) early Kaufman. But growing took patience out there.
Supplies didn't come easy. They came from San Antonio, on arduous yearly trips there and back. You think about what that means: once a year, that long haul, just to keep the colony alive.
Slowly, though, the Indian menace lessened, as the marker puts it, and Kingsboro began to grow. Now here's where the story turns on a hinge. Word reached King that the Texas Republic was fixing to join the United States.
A man who'd built a fort and held forty families together through the lean years wasn't going to let that moment slip by him. In 1846, he got the patent to the lands at the fort. He had his claim, on paper, official.
And then he died. Just like that, the man who'd led forty people out of Mississippi, who'd held on long enough to see his name on a land patent in a new American state, he was gone. But here's the thing about what King built: it was bigger than King.
His widow took up his plans for the colony and carried them forward. The settlement didn't fold. It didn't scatter.
It grew into what would become the city of Kaufman. Forty pioneers. One fort.
One woman who refused to let it end there. That's the ground this city stands on.
What the marker says
(Founded 1840) Established by Wm. P. King and 40 pioneers he led from Holly Springs, Miss.; this was then in Nacogdoches County, Republic of Texas. Caddo, Cherokee, Delaware and Kickapoo Indians roamed the area. Settlers built log cabins inside the fort. When the Indian menace lessened, Kingsboro (or early Kaufman) began to grow. Supplies came from San Antonio, in arduous yearly trips there. Hearing the Texas Republic was joining the United States, King in 1846 got patent to lands at the fort. Although he soon died, his widow carried on his plans for the colony. (1970) Incise on back: Kaufman County Historical Survey Committee