Montgomery County created this week in 1837
By Robin Montgomery

Map from the Montgomery County Historical Commission

Original county boundaries of Montgomery County included Grimes, Walker, San Jacinto and

a portion of Madison and Walker counties. Montgomery County was formed on Dec. 14,1837
 

Roots of our country reach to the Independence of Mexico from Spain in 1821. By 1824, Mexican Texas allied with the state of Coahuila whose capital was in Saltillo. From 1824 until 1831 Texas consisted of one department, headquartered in San Antonio. In 1831 it was added to the Department of Nacogdoches while 1834 witnessed the birth of the Department of the Brazos, with its capital at San Felipe de Austin.

The Department of the Brazos stretched West to East from the Lavaca River to the watershed between the San Jacinto and Trinity Rivers and South to North from the Gulf to the Red River. By the time of the Independence Convention at Washington on the Brazos in March 1836, stretched over the three departments were 23 municipalities, entities similar to Anglo counties. Indeed, at that convention, on March 17, the Texans designated all 23 municipalities as counties One of the municipalities in the Department of the Brazos, established in 1828, was Austin Municipality. Originally that municipality reached from the Lavaca to the San Jacinto River West to East while ranging from the Gulf to the San Antonio Road South to North. By 1833, Austin Municipality had expanded, incorporating such communities as Bastrop, Matagorda and Harrisburg.

ustin Municipality eventually broke up into 15 smaller municipalities. One of these, formed in 1835, was Washington Municipality, headquartered at Washington on the Brazos. When the Constitutional Convention declared all municipalities as counties, Washington Municipality became Washington County occupying both sides of the Brazos River. Then began the breakup of this great county. On the West, the county yielded land for the new counties of Brazos, Washington, Burleson and Lee counties.

Meanwhile, settlers on the east side of the Brazos were frustrated with traveling the distance to Washington for official county business in an atmosphere of mosquitoes. Consequently, several petitions from the settlers led on Dec. 14 to the birth of the new county of Montgomery. This was the third county, after Houston and Fannin, which the new Republic of Texas created.

The Texas Legislature designated the borders of the new county to include “all that part of the County of Washington lying east of the Brazos, and southeast of the Navasota Rivers.” This made clear the western border while the northern border was clearly marked as the San Antonio Road. As heir of Washington Municipality, the southern border centered on Lake Creek. However, by 1840 it reached to Spring Creek.

The volatile search for an eastern border holds special interest to citizens of Conroe. On Dec. 18, 1837 it was ruled that Liberty County would reach only nine miles west of the Trinity. Only then was it clear that the future Conroe and its immediate environs would rest exclusively within Montgomery County for Liberty Municipality had stretched to the San Jacinto. Also, while part of the eastern boundary reached the Trinity, for a short time the area of future Conroe occupied an earlier version of Madison County with a Hamilton County above and a Spring Creek County below just above a bit of Harrisburg County.

To further complicate matters, three other colonial efforts centered on the San Jacinto as their western border. One of these was the aborted colony of Hayden Edwards which lost its bearings in the ill-fated Fredonian Rebellion. Another was that of Joseph Vehlein which fused into a coalition with Lorenzo de Zavala and David G. Burnet. By 1830, this group had assigned its holdings to the Galveston Bay and Texas Land Company, headquartered in New York, whose exotic and myriad machinations meandered through and beyond the era of the Republic of Texas.

The third colonization effort whose legal jurisdiction spread westward to the San Jacinto was a colony in the Atascocita District. The colony was heir of a Spanish Fort and military outpost established in the mid-18th Century to guard against French incursion into the area of the Trinity River. From 1826-31 settlers from the US exercised authority over the Atascocita mandate area stretching from the San Jacinto to the Sabine and from the Gulf to Nacogdoches. Later this area became Liberty Municipality which, in turn, became Liberty County.

As things settled, in 1846 carved out of Montgomery County were Grimes and Walker Counties to be followed in 1853 by a portion of later Madison County and in 1870 by a part of San Jacinto County. Finally, in 1873 Montgomery County gave way to a small section of Waller County.

Amazing are the crosscurrents of history that led to Montgomery County as we know it. Later, an article addressing the various theories on the naming of the county and an aborted effort to name it Travis.

Robin Montgomery is a native of Montgomery County, a historian, professor, author and contributing columnist for The Courier.

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