Frostown

Frostown (Frost-Town), an early settlement in what is now the city of Houston, was named for the Frost family, who arrived in the 1830s. It was located on Buffalo Bayou in Harrisburg (now Harris) County eight miles upstream from Harrisburg and several blocks east of the conjunction of White Oak Bayou and Buffalo Bayou, west of present U.S. Highway 59. In 1822 the area was settled by the Wilkins family, Dr. James A. E. Phelps and his wife, Rosalie A. Yerby, Stephen Holston, John Austin, and others. Austin received a two-league survey in 1824 from the Spanish government under the supervision of Stephen F. Austin. The 1826 census of Austin's colony taken by the Spanish government listed about twenty inhabitants, mainly farmers and stockraisers. Between the late 1820s and the 1840s, Germans began settling in the area, and the settlement was called simultaneously Germantown and Frostown.

Adapted from the official Handbook of Texas, a state encyclopedia developed by the Texas State Historical Association (TSHA). It is an authoritative source of trusted historical records.