Shawnee

Shawnee was at the junction of U.S. Highway 69 and Farm Road 1818 on the Texas and New Orleans Railroad, four miles northwest of Zavalla in central Angelina County. The antebellum settlement, one of the earliest in the county, was north of Shawnee Creek in the general vicinity of what is today Farm Road 1818, where it runs between U.S. 69 and the community of Shawnee Prairie. At Shawnee Switch on the rail line was located a barrel-stave-making operation during the first decades of this century. Stave makers from Yugoslavia originally constituted the majority of the labor force in such camps in East Texas, whose products were shipped mostly to Germany. Other industries of the area included farming and turpentine manufacture. Shawnee was listed by the Texas Almanacs of the 1930s and 1940s as having one business and twenty-five inhabitants.