San Augustine

San Augustine is at the junction of U.S. Highway 96, State highways 21 and 147, and Farm Roads 711, 353, 3230, 2213, and 1277, on the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway, thirty-two miles east of Nacogdoches in north central San Augustine County. Ayish Bayou flows through the town two miles west of the public square, and Carrizo Creek has been dammed just southwest of San Augustine to form City Lake, the source of municipal water. The original inhabitants of the area were the Ais (Aies, Ayish) tribe of the Hasinai Indians. The first European visitors were probably part of the Moscoso expedition early in the 1540s. The Indians remained undisturbed for almost 150 years, until French traders from Natchitoches ventured into the vicinity, discovering their village near the site of present San Augustine. The Spaniards returned in 1691, when Domingo Terán de los Ríos traveled through the area, cutting a path later called the Old San Antonio Road. In 1717 Father Antonio Márgil de Jesús established Nuestra Señora de los Dolores de los Ais Mission near the Ais village on Ayish Bayou. After being abandoned because of the threat of a French invasion in 1719, the mission was reestablished on the site of modern San Augustine by the Marqués de San Miguel de Aguayo in 1721. But permanent settlement did not occur until after 1779, when the French threat became less ominous. Then Anglos and scattered remnants of the Kickapoo, Cherokee, Delaware, and Shawnee Indians immigrated from the southern states, particularly Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and Tennessee. Among these pioneers, who called the area the Ayish Bayou District, were John Quinalty, Susanna Horton, Martha Lewes, Edmund Quirk, and Chichester Chaplin. Antonio Leal and his wife, Gertrudis de los Santos, settled at the site of San Augustine and built a small house with corrals to accommodate wild mustangs gathered by Leal and Philip Nolan for sale in Louisiana. In 1800 Leal sold the property to Pedro Buigas, who sold it the following year to Edmund Quirk.

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.