The Survey Community

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Way out in Newton County, there's a place with a name that tells you exactly what it is. The Survey.

And to understand how it got that way, you've got to go back to the early eighteen hundreds, when a man named William Williams was making his mark on the Sabine Valley. Williams was a pioneer in the truest sense, and in 1834 he obtained a large land grant from the Republic of Mexico. A surveyed piece of land, claimed and measured.

And that land, it turned out, had a way of drawing people in. Settlers started arriving, looked around at what Williams had done, and they called the place just what it was. The Survey.

Now, by 1847, the community was getting serious. Wade H. Mattox, born in 1800, decided this settlement needed a proper frame house.

The first one. That required lumber, and lumber didn't grow nearby in the form of planks, so a neighbor by the name of Ezekiel Cobb, born in 1825, hauled it in all the way from Alexandria, Louisiana. You think about that sometime on a long stretch of Texas highway.

Hauling lumber from Louisiana so a community could have its first frame house. That's how a place takes root. By the eighteen fifties, the Survey had filled out into something real.

The families who called it home read like a roll call of East Texas settlement: Booker, Bush, Dade, Clark, Collins, Conner, Droddy, Garlington, Hardy, Joiner, Jones, McGee, Mitchell, Smith, Trotti, and Weeks. Farming was the backbone of the economy, and lumbering came along in time to keep things moving. Then the Civil War arrived, eighteen sixty-one to sixty-five, and the Survey sent at least sixteen of its residents to fight for the Confederacy.

Sixteen men from one small community. That number sits heavy when you say it out loud. Wade H.

Mattox, who built that first frame house, died in 1863, right in the middle of it. Ezekiel Cobb, the man who hauled the lumber, died in 1864. The war took from this place in ways that numbers only begin to capture.

The community kept going. In 1889, the Methodists built a church on land given by Mr. and Mrs. J.

W. Mattox, and that building pulled double duty as a schoolhouse too. Then in 1903, a post office opened under the name Surveyville Post Office, though it wasn't called that for long.

It was renamed Mayflower, and the community carried on under that new postal address. But starting in the nineteen forties, population shifts began doing what time and movement always do to small places. The school consolidated with Burkeville in 1949.

The post office closed in 1951. And in 1961, the church disbanded. One by one, the public anchors of the Survey community came down.

What remains are the burial grounds. The church building, the Mattox Cemetery, and several other cemeteries, all now maintained by the Survey Cemetery Association. The living may have moved on, but somebody decided the dead deserved tending.

And out in Newton County, that counts for something.

What the marker says

William Williams, an early 1800s Sabine Valley pioneer, obtained a large land grant in 1834 from the Republic of Mexico. His surveyed land attracted settlers, who called the location "The Survey". In 1847, Wade H. Mattox (1800-1863) built the first frame house in the settlement, using lumber hauled from Alexandria, LA., by a neighbor, Ezekiel Cobb (1825-1864). By the 1850s, the survey had settlers named Booker, Bush, Dade, Clark, Collins, Conner, Droddy, Garlington, Hardy, Joiner, Jones, McGee, Mitchell, Smith, Trotti, and Weeks. The economy was based on farming and (later) lumbering. At least 16 survey community residents fought for the Confederacy in the Civil War (1861-65). In 1889, the Methodists built a church on land given by Mr. and Mrs. J. W. Mattox. The building was also used for school purposes. Surveyville Post Office, opened in 1903, was soon renamed "Mayflower". Population shifts starting in the 1940s caused the school to consolidate with Burkeville (1949), the post office to close (1951), and the church to disband (1961). Public facilities, including the church building, Mattox Cemetery, and several other burial grounds, are now maintained by the Survey Cemetery Association.