Community of Weches

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Now, the land around Weches, Texas, has seen a lot of history come and go. We're talking about a spot located near the site of seventeenth-century Spanish missionary activity, so people have been finding something worth settling here for a long, long time.

The farming community itself got its start when the McLeans, the Conners, the Patton family, and the Gregg family all made their way to this stretch of Houston County, every one of them arrived by 1840. Four families, putting down roots in the same corner of East Texas, near a river that gave the place its first name. They called it Neches, after that nearby river.

Simple enough. Made sense. Until it didn't.

Post Office officials came back with the news that Neches had already been assigned to another community somewhere else in Texas. So the residents made a small but lasting adjustment, and Weches it became. Now, the very next year after that name change, Alfred Monroe Gregg did something that tends to separate a settlement from a community.

He set aside land for a church, a school, and a cemetery. Those three things together, that's a people deciding they're staying. Weches kept its post office all the way until 1939, when it finally closed.

The Spanish missionaries came through in the sixteen hundreds. The families arrived by 1840. The post office ran until 1939.

That's a long arc of human presence on one piece of East Texas ground, and the marker's still out there making sure nobody forgets it.

What the marker says

Located near site of 17th-century Spanish missionary activity, this farming community had its beginnings with the settlement of the McLeans, Conners, Patton, and Gregg families, who had all arrived in the area by 1840. Originally known as Neches for the nearby river, the similar name Weches was adopted when Post Office officials informed residents that "Neches" had been assigned to another community. The following year Alfred Monroe Gregg set aside land for a church, school and cemetery. The Weches post office closed in 1939.