DUANE
Duane's take
Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Somewhere west of the Neches River, in what's now Jefferson County, there was once a town called Santa Anna — and most folks driving through today have no idea it ever existed. The year was 1835.
A surveyor and land speculator out of San Augustine County named David Brown platted the townsite, laid it all out on paper with the kind of confidence that says, this right here is going to be something. And for a while, it was. Santa Anna became the center of political and military activities for the whole region stretching from the Neches River out to what is now the western boundary of Jefferson County, including southern Hardin County.
That's no small territory. Two men — Thomas Huling of Jasper and Henry Millard — owned a store right there in Santa Anna. They brought in a fellow named Joseph Pulsifer to manage it.
Pulsifer arrived on July 21, 1835, and here's where the story gets something extra. The man wrote letters. Long, detailed letters home to his sister back in Connecticut.
Before the Texas Revolution, during it, after it — Pulsifer kept writing, kept noticing, kept recording. Families living in the vicinity. Two stores.
A school building. Those letters became a valuable written record of early Jefferson County history, and we are lucky they survived. But history, as it tends to do, kept moving.
The Texas Revolution came and went, and when it did, the boundary of Jefferson County was extended westward. Out there to the west, Henry Millard — the same Henry Millard who had a stake in that Santa Anna store, and who would go on to serve as an officer in the Republic of Texas Army — joined Nancy Tevis and Joseph Grigsby in founding a new town called Beaumont. In April of 1836, Beaumont consisted of exactly three houses.
Three. But it got organized. It became the county seat.
And once a town becomes the county seat, well, the gravity of things shifts. Beaumont grew. Absentee land ownership gnawed at Santa Anna from the outside.
And then, in 1847, David Brown — the man who had platted it all, who had stood on that ground and imagined a future there — died. And Santa Anna, without its founder, without momentum, without the county seat to anchor it, quietly disappeared. Three houses in Beaumont beat a townsite with two stores and a school, and that is just the way the current ran.
What the marker says
The Santa Anna townsite was platted in 1835 by surveyor and land speculator David Brown of San Augustine County. It became the center of political and military activities for the area west of the Neches River to the present western boundary of Jefferson County, including southern Hardin County. Thomas Huling of Jasper and Henry Millard, later an officer in the Republic of Texas Army, owned a store in Santa Anna which they hired Joseph Pulsifer to manage. Pulsifer arrived on July 21, 1835, and in letters to his sister in Connecticut he recounted activities in this area before and after the Texas Revolution. His letters, a valuable written record of early Jefferson County history, referred to families living in the vicinity and the existence of two stores and a school building in Santa Anna. Following the Texas Revolution the boundary of Jefferson County was extended westward. The town of Beaumont, founded by Henry Millard, Nancy Tevis, and Joseph Grigsby, and consisting of only three houses in April 1836, was organized and became county seat. The growth of Beaumont, absentee land ownership, and the death of town founder David Brown in 1847 led to the demise of Santa Anna.