Bevilport

Bevilport (Bevelport) is on Farm Road 2799 and the east bank of the Angelina River nine miles west of Jasper in northwestern Jasper County. It was named for John Bevil, but it should not be confused with the Bevil, Texas, that became Jasper. Bevilport was a river-navigation point from 1830 to 1860. Sam Houston purchased the first lot in the townsite. The community had a population of 140 by 1831 and was noted for bustling docks, which shipped East Texas cotton and hides to New Orleans. A mail station operated at Bevilport in 1835, and the community was incorporated by the Congress of the Republic of Texas on June 5, 1837. The town had a hotel and main street by the 1850s and served as a business and social center until the Civil War. It was a freight depot for northern Jasper County during high-water seasons. In the 1870s the town declined when logging for the Beaumont sawmills impeded river transportation on the Neches River below its confluence with the Angelina. A post office, established in 1854, was discontinued in 1866, reopened in 1897, and closed permanently in 1899. In the 1890s the community had a general store and a population of 100. A historical marker was erected at the site in 1936, but by 1948 only two old store buildings and the home of Randolph C. Doom, built in 1852, were still standing. In the 1980s two nearby churches and scattered dwellings remained to mark the townsite.