1892 VELASCO TEXAS JB SHEA DEWEY LANGFORD ATTORNEY LAW

Description

PLEASE READ BEFORE BUYING OR BIDDING!!
I sell ONLY ORIGINAL items and NOT ANY reproductions.
PLEASE view my other auctions and ebay store items for related ephemera, antique documents, and paper collectibles.
This is a
FULL SIZE LETTERHEAD
THAT IS NOT ALL SHOWN IN THE SCAN, it has normal LETTER FOLDS, HAS FILE HOLES AT TOP
FROM THE LAW OFFICE OF
J. B. SHEA
(USED TO BE LANGFORD & SHEA BUT LANGFORD IS CROSSED OUT)
ATTORNEY AT LAW,
IN
VELASCO, TEXAS
IN THE YEAR
1892
.
NAMES LISTED AT TOP OF LETTERHEAD ARE DEWEY LANGFORD AND J. B. SHEA. VERY INTERESTING CONTENT TO THIS HISTORICAL LETTER.  DOWN BELOW LETTER YOU WILL FIND GREAT HISTORY ON THE IMPORTANT AND HISTORICAL VELASCO!
J. B. SHEA SIGNED THIS LETTER!
VELASCO, TEXAS
.
Old Velasco, on the east side of the Brazos River sixteen miles south of Angleton and four miles from the Gulf of Mexico in southeastern Brazoria County, was founded in 1831. Ten years earlier the schooner
Lively
qv
landed at the site with thirty-eight men, the first of Stephen F. Austin's
qv
colonists. Nothing but a single house stood at the site until Mexico set up a customs port there and dispatched troops in 1831 to help the customs collector. Subsequently, more than 25,000 settlers entered through the port. The community developed upstream from
the coast by 1835; a customhouse, salt works, and trading posts were located at Velasco during the immigration period. The town was named for a Mexican general, as was Quintana, on the opposite side of the river. According to one writer, Old Velasco became the "Boston harbor of the Texas Revolution," as the site of the battle of Velasco
qv
in 1832. A cholera epidemic reduced
the population to 100 in 1834, and a mail route from San Felipe to Velasco was established in 1835. After the battle of San Jacinto,
qv
President David G. Burnet
qv
made the town the temporary capital of the Republic of Texas.
qv
Government records were housed at Fort Velasco until the first capital of Texas was established at Columbia. Antonio López de Santa Anna
qv
signed the treaties of Velasco
qv
on May 14, 1836.
Between the Texas Revolution and the Civil War,
qv
Velasco and Quintana served as summer resorts for wealthy plantation families of the region. Galveston businessmen Samuel May Williams and Thomas F. McKinney
qv
established warehouses and organized shipping of all kinds at the port. A seminary for young ladies, Velasco Female Academy, and a school for young men, taught by Oxford graduates, were established by
1838. Comfortable hotels were built to accommodate visitors and patrons of the racetrack located a short distance upriver. A local post office operated from 1846 until 1891, when mail was rerouted through Quintana. Antebellum Velasco had business houses, homes, a hotel, boardinghouses, wharves, and a customhouse; riverboats embarked from the wharves for Galveston and New Orleans. With completion of the first intracoastal canal to Galveston Bay in 1856, however, the town began to decline as shipping was diverted to Galveston.
During the Civil War the port of Velasco was fortified by Confederate troops and eight gun batteries, and Union ships were forced to go to New Orleans for drinking water, food, and fuel. The port played an active role in the exchange of cotton for European guns, ammunition, milled
goods, and medicines for army and home use. Federal vessels attempted to stop vital trade and fired upon shore defenses, patrols, and small craft seeking to outrun them. With the ruin of the plantation system after the war, Velasco and Quintana declined as resorts. In 1875 a hurricane destroyed even the old town records. By 1884, when its residents numbered fifty and local farmers shipped livestock, Velasco had been reduced to semiweekly steamer service to Brazoria and reported only a general store and a boat builder's shop.
The new town of Velasco was surveyed and laid out in 1891, when a new Velasco post office was established. The port was officially opened by the United States secretary of the treasury on July 7, 1891. A year later over million worth of lots
had been sold. Promoters working throughout the Midwest advertised the Velasco Hotel and an area along the river designed as Riverside Park. By 1892 Velasco had 136 business establishments and 167 residences, an electric light plant, and a planing mill. Jetties were built by the Brazos River Channel and Dock Company by 1897, and the newly dug deepwater port ran to a depth of 17½ feet. New settlers traveled to Houston by train, to Columbia on the Columbia Tap branch of the International and Great Northern Railroad, and by riverboat down the Brazos to Velasco. The Velasco Terminal Railway, completed around 1890, allowed passengers to proceed directly from the Columbia Tap connection at Anchor to the new town. According to some sources, much of Velasco, first owned by John A. and William H. Wharton,
qv
was later sold to an agent of the English Rothschild family, who planned to establish a great seaport at the site. By 1896 the community had a new lighthouse, several churches, schools, hotels, a national bank, a cottonseed oil mill, cotton gins, special and general
stores, and two weekly newspapers, the
Times
and the
World
. In that year Velasco shipped cottonseed oil, cotton, lumber, and livestock. Surfside, or Old Velasco,
and Crescent Beach could be reached by electric railroad. The population was 3,000 when the Galveston hurricane of 1900
qv
wrecked the town.
Velasco rebuilt slowly, enduring fluctuations of poverty and prosperity. By 1914, with a population of 1,000 and only one newspaper, the
World
, remaining, the community had a fish and oyster plant and shipped cattle, cotton, cane sugar, and syrup. The population dropped to a low of 400 in the mid-1930s, when the town supported twelve businesses. But diversion of the Brazos River and the formation of a tidal estuary deep enough to accommodate large vessels in the old river channel subsequently revived both Velasco and nearby Freeport. Construction of chemical-industry facilities during World War II
qv
increased the population from 900 in 1940, when the city was incorporated with E. F. Roeller as mayor, to 5,200 by 1950. With a population estimated at 4,000 in 1956, Velasco was incorporated with Freeport on July 27, 1957. The post office became Velasco Station. The community subsequently became part of the Brazosport industrial and port area and Brazosport Independent School District.
If you have any questions, please contact me!
Terms & Conditions
EBAY PAYMENT DUE WITHIN 1 DAY OF THIS PURCHASE!
When you receive your item, PLEASE consider feed back (I will see it) and I will reciprocate feed back at that time.
FREE SHIPPING TO THE CONTINENTAL US ONLY
THE TAG IS A LOOSE PIECE OF PAPER AND NOT ATTACHED TO THE ITEM
PLEASE view my other auctions and ebay store items for related ephemera, antique documents, and paper collectibles AT TEXASJOHNYYBOY.
THANK YOU VERY MUCH AND GOOD LUCK Y'ALL !!