Peach Tree Village

Peach Tree Village, near the Neches River on a site now crossed by Farm Road 2097 two miles north of the present Chester in Tyler County, was the largest and most prominent of the villages established by the Alabama Indians. It was on a hill in the Kisatchie Wold, the ridge running through northern Tyler County. Members of the Alabama and Coushatta Indians had begun entering Texas in the latter part of the eighteenth century, and the Spanish Indian agent Samuel Davenport reported that the Alabamas established their principal village on the west bank of the Neches River eight leagues above its confluence with the Angelina. The Alabama Trace and the Coushatta Trace passed through this village. Also, it was the northern terminal of Long King's Trace, and the important north-south trail, the Liberty-Nacogdoches Road, was five miles east. Surveyors' field notes for fifteen original land grants in the counties of Polk and Tyler refer to this village. The Alabamas' claim to lands in Peach Tree Village and vicinity was contested for the first time when, in 1834 Col. Peter Ellis Bean, an American serving in a Mexican army detachment stationed at Nacogdoches, applied for and received a grant of eleven leagues of land from the Mexican government. Colonel Bean, who promoted this grant through Gavino Aranjo, one of his subordinates in the Mexican army, located part of his grant on land occupied by the Alabamas at Peach Tree Village. This land was later conveyed to Frost Thorne and his successors.

The Alabamas were on good terms with White settlers in the area, who included Peter Cauble and Valentine Ignatius Burch. Cauble settled at Peach Tree Village sometime around 1831, and Burch, who married Cauble's daughter, settled there about 1845. Peter Cauble's house was mentioned in the 1846 description of the boundaries of Polk County. At Gen. Sam Houston's request, the Alabamas remained neutral during the Texas Revolution. But they fed and cared for White settlers who passed through Peach Tree Village in the Runaway Scrape. To show that they were neutral the Alabamas displayed a large piece of white cloth every time a group of fleeing Texas approached Peach Tree Village. After Texas gained independence from Mexico, increasing numbers of settlers located in and near Peach Tree Village, and this village began a gradual transition from an Indian community to a prosperous frontier town with a store, a cotton gin, a saloon, a church, a school, and a post office that opened in 1853. During the years of the Republic of Texas the Alabamas began leaving Peach Tree Village and moving five miles southeastward to the Fenced-in Village.