DUANE
Duane's take
Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. John Durst had himself a vision in 1837 — a real town, built from scratch, right there in Nacogdoches County near the ruins of the old Mission La Purisima Concepcion de Maria. Now that's a foundation with some history underneath it, and Durst knew it.
He didn't just stake a claim and call it a day. He built a saw and grist mill. He raised a large warehouse right there in town.
And from his own house — his own front window — he could look out and see the boats moored to the wharves on the Angelina River. Can you picture that? A man standing at his window watching commerce float by, thinking he'd built something that would last.
Mount Sterling, it was called, and for a moment it must have felt like exactly that — sterling. But 1838 came along, and with it the Cordova Rebellion, and that was, as the marker puts it plainly, the doom of the town. Not a slow fade, not a quiet decline — doom.
The Cordova Rebellion sealed it. John Durst moved on to Leon County, and the town he'd raised beside those old mission ruins didn't follow him. Mount Sterling stayed behind, and what the State of Texas erected this marker over in 1936 was a site — just a site.
The mills, the warehouse, the wharves, the boats on the Angelina — all of it gone. Some visions don't outlast the times they're born into.
What the marker says
Established by John Durst in 1837. Near the ruins of the Mission La Purisima Concepcion de Maria he built a saw and grist mill; in the town, a large warehouse. From his house he could see the boats moored to the wharves on the Angelina. The Cordova Rebellion in 1838 sealed the doom of the town. Durst moved to Leon County. Erected by the State of Texas 1936