A Brief History of Wiess Bluff, Texas
By W. T. Block
{ Originally published in the booklet
"HISTORIC SITES IN JASPER COUNTY", rev. 1979,
Jasper County Historical Comm, Dr. Thurman G. Smith, Chairman.
Thanks to Mr. Tom Cloud for his
efforts in scanning and converting the article to web format.}
To the romantically-inclined,
perhaps no other spot better exemplifies the nostalgia of the steamboat era
than does Wiess Bluff. It is located along a gentle bend of the Neches
River in Southwest Jasper County, about 15 miles north of Beaumont, Texas.
Prior to 1840, this bend was known as Grant's Bluff, from some
little-known, early-day figure.(1) However the earliest
available deed records there involve John S. Roberts and Dr. Niles F. Smith,
both key figures in early East Texas history and original proprietors in
General Sam Houston's and Colonel Philip Sublett's Sabine City Company. In
January, 1840, at the time Simon Wiess settled at Wiess Bluff, Roberts
transferred 2,200 acres of the Patsy Liney league to Dr. Smith, reserving
116 acres as part of the future townsite.(2) During a part
of the years 1840-1841, Smith was residing at the site, but returned to
Sabine Pass, where his principal business interests were concentrated.(3)*
The site's history is
principally that of Simon Wiess, who was born on New Year's Day of 1800, a
son of middle-class, German parents who lived at Lublin, Poland. Knowledge
of his early life is minute, but he was widely traveled as a mariner, was
trained in law, and spoke seven languages.(4) At one time
he was deputy-collector for the short-lived Port of Camp Sabine, at old
Sabinetown, for the Republic of Texas.(5)
Following his marriage to
Margaret Sturrock, Wiess merchandised for two years, beginning in 1836, at
Old Stone Fort in Nacogdoches, followed by two more at Beaumont and
Grigsby's Bluff (present-day Port Neches), Texas. Being economically
ill-suited at all three places, Wiess' astute business acumen caused him to
re-establish his store in January, 1840, at Wiess Bluff, the point on the
Neches River where year-round tidewater navigation ends, and to which cotton
would have to be freighted overland by oxcart during low-water seasons.(6)
Wiess
established his business at Wiess Bluff in partnership with Dr. John A.
Veatch, pioneer Jasper County surveyor, landholder, and scientist,
purchasing an initial $10,000 inventory in December, 1839, from Ira Peck of
Georgia.(7) Thereafter, Wiess imported all of the
necessities expedient to frontier living, and, in turn, exported the cotton,
corn, hides, wool, tobacco, pelts, and other products of East Texas to the
markets at New Orleans and Galveston.
Wiess speculated considerably
in land, increasing his holdings from $3,000 in 1840, to $10,000 in 1850,
and to $15,000 in 1860.(8)
However, a period of Civil War
and Reconstruction crippled him financially and physically, and he died at
Wiess Bluff in 1868. His business prospered a few years longer under the
proprietorship of his widow and younger sons, but, for all practical
purposes, had ended by 1881, with the death of his widow and the passing of
the riverboat epoch.(9)
Between the years 1840 and
1900, Wiess Bluff also acquired a position in East Texas lumbering history,
principally as a log concentration and shipping point between 1880-1900.
Simon Wiess was the first in this field, operating a “peck" mill at Wiess
Bluff during the 1840's and 1850's. A principal characteristic of this type
of milling was that the noise of the peck hammer could be heard for more
than a mile through the forest.(10) Following the Civil
War, H. C. Pedigo of Tyler County built the first
single-circular steam saw mill at Wiess Bluff. This mill was purchased by
Samuel Remley (of Port Neches) on June 23, 1870, then dismantled and moved
to Grigsby's Bluff in Jefferson County.(11)
Wiess Bluff reached its zenith
as a timber center after 1885 when J. G. Smyth and
Company began logging operations there. In 1888, this firm sold out its
interests, including tram roads and locomotives, to Beaumont Lumber Company,
which remained in operation there until around 1900. Wiess Bluff acquired
its maximum population during this period.(12)
While the strategic importance
of Wiess Bluff as a mercantile center ended around 1880, its business
traditions were carried on in the Simon Wiess progeny, three of whom became
Southeast Texas industrialists and millionaires.
Three (probably four) of Wiess'
sons, namely Napoleon, William, and Mark, entered the Confederate army in
Company A, Spaight's 11th Texas Cavalry Battalion, which saw action during
Louisiana's Atchafalaya River campaign of 1863.(13)
Wiess' only daughter Pauline married Abel Coffin (also a Confederate
veteran), engineer on the Neches River steamboat "Sunflower." While all
five of Wiess' sons were merchant traders, one, Captain William Wiess, wore
out two steamboats, one being the "Adrianne", whose unsightly posture on the
water won for it the appellation of "the sitting goose".
Another son, Captain Napoleon
Wiess, was master of the steamboats "J. H. Graham" and "Albert Gallatin"
until his death in 1872. Volume III of Texana carries the story of
Captain Wiess and the "Gallatin" "Coming to get the cotton" at Boone's Ferry
in Tyler County in 1870, and of the subsequent two-night grand ball aboard
"with the best fiddlers available."(14)
By 1876, the brothers Mark,
William and Valentine Wiess had all entered into business at Beaumont,
Texas, where, in the same year, they organized Reliance Lumber Company, one
of the great yellow pine mills during the heyday of East Texas lumbering.
In 1876, this mill made Southern sawmill history when Mark Wiess perfected
"shot gun feed", a method which doubled that mill's capacity, and resulted
in two-way movement of the log carriage through direct steam pressure.
The Wiess brothers were also
instrumental in acceptance and standardization of the present system of
lumber grading throughout the Southland. By 1882, Reliance mill was cutting
50,000 board feet of timber each day. Later, it became a major exporter to
Europe, where it maintained offices in London. This company sold out to
John Henry Kirby in 1902.(15)
However, it was Beaumont's
Spindletop oil gusher (which blew in on land belonging to Valentine Wiess
and his partners), which carried the Wiess brothers into the petroleum field
and drastically altered their financial assets. William Wiess organized and
became the chief owner of Reliance Oil Company and Paraffine Oil Company
and, in 1903, brought in the Batson, Texas, oil field. In 1917, his son,
Harry Carothers Wiess, took his father's oil interests (along with Ross
Sterling's Humble Oil Company) into the founding coalition which constituted
Humble Oil and Refining Company. Thereafter, Harry Wiess remained one of
the chief executives of that giant firm and its president from 1935 until
his death in 1948.(16)
In brief, this is the amazing
story of Wiess Bluff and of the Simon Wiess offspring, who rose from Old
World immigrant status to Southwestern industrial leadership in two
generations. In December, 1930, at the age of 93, Pauline Wiess Coffin, the
oldest child and sole survivor of the old generation, died in the family
home at Wiess Bluff, drawing the curtain for all time on the Wiess Bluff
story. In her youth, she had known Gen. Sam Houston and other notables of
Texas history, who had frequently visited at Wiess Bluff while using the
Neches River as a travel artery during the steamboat era.(17)
At the present time,
80-year-old Arthur W. Coffin, a great grandson and the site's lone link with
its founder, lives less than a stone's throw away from where Simon Wiess'
store, wharf, and warehouses once stood. Even today, a visitor under Wiess
Bluff's towering pines must guard himself with care lest a lapse into
antebellum nostalgia devour him. Such can still conjure up the false echoes
of steamboat whistles and visions of cotton bales. (Arthur Coffin died
in 1978 at the age of 86.)
Endnotes
1. Vol. D. p 109,
Jefferson County Deed Record; Vol. E., pp. 536-538, Jasper County
Deed Record.
2. Vol. A, pp.
90-91, Jasper County Deed Record.
3. Vol. D, p.
275, Jefferson County Deed Record; G. White (ed.), The 1840 Census
of the Republic of Texas (Austin: Pemberton Press, 1966), p. 91, Jasper
County. Roberts is intimately associated with the histories of both
Nacogdoches and San Augustine, where, in 1831, he was the Mexican alcalde.
He signed both the Texas Declaration of Independence and the first
Constitution of the new-born Republic of Texas. Dr. Smith flits over early
Texas history with the agility of an antelope, and his business and land
dealings with Simon Wiess spanned the whole of East Texas. From 1839 until
1858, Smith was "Mr. Sabine Pass."
By 1834, Smith had become a large landholder at Milam municipality in
Robertson's colony, fought in the Texas Corps of Engineers during the
revolution against Mexico, and in December, 1836, was appointed by his
intimate friend President Houston as Texas’ first bank examiner (for
McKinney-Williams and Co.’s Bank of Agriculture and Commerce). In 1837, he
was a partner with the Allen brothers in the Houston Townsite Company.
Until his death in 1858, he was physician, druggist, Texas collector of
customs, shipbuilder, speculator, chief agent for Sabine City Company, steam
sawmiller, and merchant-partner of John Sealy and John H. Hutchings, all at
Sabine Pass. Because of him, the fortunes of that community rose or waned in
conformity with Sam Houston's political fortunes. See also Vols. A,
pp,189-90, and D, pp. 154-55, Jefferson County Deed Record; Flanagan,
Sam Houston’s Texas, p. 53; Writings of Sam Houston, I, p.
507, and II, pp. 312-13; Gamel, Laws of Texas, I, p. 1135; Webb and
Carroll, Handbook of Texas, II, p. 625, Richardson, East Texas:
Its History and Its Makers, III, p. 1344; Winkler, Secret Journals of
the Senate, Republic of Texas, 1836-1845, pp. 32, 220, 282, 298 307;
Telegraph and Texas Register, February 6, 13, 1839 and July 24, 1839;
Civilian and Galveston Gazette, June 2, 1848; and Texas Gulf
Historical and Biographical Record, VII (May, 1972), p. 71.
4. John Henry
Brown, Indian Wars and Pioneers of Texas (Austin: L.E. Daniel,
189-?), pp. 474-76; T. J. Russell, "Pioneers Reminiscenses of Jefferson
County," Beaumont Journal, February 17 and March 3, 1907.
5. R. E. L.
Crane, "The History of the Revenue Service and The Commerce of the Republic
of Texas" (Ph.D. dissertation; Austin: The University of Texas, 1950), p.
313. See also pp. 284-289 for Doctor Smith's service as Customs Collector,
Port of Sabine Pass.
6. Brown, op
cit., p. 475; Beaumont Enterprise, May 28 and June 11, 1881;
December 14, 1930; January 1, 1946; Beaumont Journal, February 7 and
March 10, 1907.
7. Vol. C , pp.
347-349, Jefferson County Deed Record.
8. Vol. D, p.
109, Jefferson County Deed Record (1840) lists $3,090 (including
4,200 acres of land) of Wiess' holdings held in trust by his brother-in-law
William Sturrock as a marriage bond. However, Wiess owned other land not
held in trust, including a 1,475 acre tract of the Gahagan league on Sabine
Lake (see Ibid., Vol. D, p. 54). See also 1840 Census, pp. 92,
97; U.S. manuscript census schedules, Jasper County, Texas: for 1850, Sched.
I, p. 462, and Sched. IV, p. 441; for 1860, Sched. I, p. 17, and Sched. IV,
p. 19. Wiess appears to have prospered maximally during the decade of the
1850's when he increased his Jasper County holdings alone from 2,500 to
10,000 acres.
9. U.S.
manuscript census list (Schedule I), Jasper County, Texas, residences 213,
216, and 219.
10. Beaumont
Journal, June 12, 1914. This was probably the same mill operated by
Joseph Grigsby at Grigsby's Bluff prior to 1841. Little is known of peck
mills today since they pre-dated the advent of single-circular steam mills.
It appears that such was a horse-driven method, with the motive power
activating a multiple swinging-adze mechanism, which chipped off the bark
and roughly squared the timber.
11. Vol. P, p.
246, Jefferson County Deed Record; Beaumont Enterprise, June
11, 1881. Remley operated steam mills at Grigsby's Bluff for 20 years. His
second mill (Pedigo's) burned in 1876 and was never rebuilt.
12. Vols. 0, pp.
624, 635 and Y, p. 110, Jasper County Deed Record; Jasper Newsboy
for May 28, 1936, states that Wiess Bluff acquired a population of 2,000
during the 1870's and 1880's. This figure is doubted, however, unless born
out by the 1880 and 1890 census lists. The 1870 census indicates that only a
few families resided there.
13. 1863 muster
roll, Company A, Spaight's 11th Texas Cavalry Bn., Confederate States Army,
in National Archives. See C.K. Ragan (ed.), Diary of Captain George W.
O'Brien, pp. 47-53, for role of Co. A at Battle of Bayou Bourbeau, a
Confederate victory in Louisiana. Beaumont Enterprise for December
14, 1930, states that all five of the Wiess brothers were Confederate
veterans, but this is doubted in the case of the youngest, Massena, who was
only 15-1/2 years old at the close of the war.
The case for Valentine Wiess is not confirmed on any muster role which
the writer has examined. However, muster role of a Jasper County militia
company, the "Red Star Guard Rifles of Texas", dated March 25, 1861, lists
him as drummer. See Kirbyville (Texas) Banner, September 15, 1961,
Standard Blue Book of Texas, 1908-1909, p. 71, states that "Valentine
Wiess was a lad of sixteen years of age, but he enlisted and served
throughout the war . . . in Spaight's Battalion." Muster rolls of 1863 do
not verify this, but, published at a time when scores of Beaumont
Confederate veterans were still alive and when Wiess was one of the
wealthiest men in Southeast Texas, it would have meant social ostracism for
him if that statement were untrue.
14. Beaumont
Enterprise, September 21, 1910; T. C. Richardson, East Texas: Its
History and Its Makers (New York: Lewis Historical Publishing Company,
1940), III, 941; J. P. Landers, "Valentine Burch," Texana, III
(Summer, 1965), p. 109; see also Abel Coffin's original account of an
offshore Civil War Battle, fought on January 21, 1863 near Sabine Pass,
Texas, as is penned on a flyleaf of a copy of MacCauley's "Essays," found
aboard the captured USS "Morning Light," and still owned by a grandson, A.
W. Coffin, of Wiess Bluff.
15. See "Letterbook
of the East Texas and Louisiana Lumbermen's Association For The Years
1886-1888" (Valentine Wiess, president), 600ff, owned by Mrs. Lois Parker,
reference librarian, Lamar University, for a very complete record of the
Southeast Texas sawmills of that period. See also Beaumont Enterprise,
November 6, 1880; March 12, 19, 1881; June 13, 1914, July 30, 1913, and July
1, 1910; also Volumes S, pp. 191-195, 417-423, and U, p. 213, Jefferson
County Deed Record. Valentine Wiess was less associated with Reliance
mill than his brothers. He was principally merchant, real estate holder and
banker the latter privately at first, and later as the first president of
First National (now First Security) Bank of Beaumont. He was the largest
taxpayer on that city's property rolls.
16. H. M. Larsen
and W. W. Porter, History of Humble Oil and Refining Company (New
York: Harper and Brother, 1959), 769ff. For Simon and William Wiess, see
pp. 26-28. For Harry Carother Wiess, see pp. 100-06, 203-18, 222-34,
240-,43, 330-342, 361-72, 411-12, 526-563, 569-72, and 662-682.
17. Beaumont
Enterprise, December 14, 1930.
* Statement on first page should
indicate that 116 acres of an undivided tract were laid out as a townsite.
Also, studies indicate that Simon
Wiess could have been a Polish Jew, rather than a German Christian. Older
family traditions of the Wiess history support this evidence.
