River Oaks area entrepreneur sells out and moves to Hidalgo Falls!
by Louis F. Aulbach and Linda C. Gorski
An entrepreneur who owned land around River Oaks sells all his property holdings and moves to a farm on the Brazos River, just upstream of the popular kayaking and canoeing spot at Hidalgo Falls.
That story is extraordinary, but not too surprising.
What is surprising is that it occurred in 1835! Even before the City of Houston was conceived by the Allen brothers.
The first known resident of the area that we know as River Oaks was Allen C. Reynolds. Reynolds, who was born in Connecticut in 1786, grew up in New York and served in the War of 1812 as a captain in the United States 27th Infantry. After the war, Reynolds apparently visited Louisiana for his name appears in Jean Laffite's diary. Then, in 1826, at age 40, Reynolds sailed for Texas, and for a while, he ran a mercantile establishment in Galveston with his partner William T. Austin.
Initially, Reynolds acquired property in Brazoria County while, as early as 1826, he applied for a land grant of one league in what is now Harris County. He moved his wife and four children to Texas in 1830, and in 1831, Reynolds was granted a league of land by Stephen F. Austin that encompassed 4,428 acres extending south of Buffalo Bayou to the present day Bellaire Boulevard. The tract ranged from about Shepherd Drive on the east to the Southern Pacific Railroad tracks near Weslayan Street on the west.
When paddling from Loop 610, you will pass under the Southern Pacific trestle in about one mile. The Reynolds tract begins at the railroad bridge and runs along the south bank of the bayou as far as Shepherd Drive.
Reynolds built a residence north of the present Weslayan Street and Highway 59 intersection, and from 1831 to 1835, he operated a sawmill and a grist mill on Buffalo Bayou. He reportedly transported the lumber he cut down the bayou in his boat, taking it to Harrisburg since the town of Houston was yet to be founded. Lumber was a very commercial product in the 1830's, just as it is today. Not only was there a growing market as settlers flooded into Texas and the Austin colony, but markets as far away as Tampico, Mexico were eager for the tall, straight lumber of east Texas pine.
In 1835, Reynolds sold all his property to James Spillman and moved away. He bought the William and Peter Kerr land grant in Washington County in 1835, and he built his home on Hidalgo Bluff, a few miles upstream of Hidalgo Falls on the Brazos River.
Allen Reynolds died, at age 51, in Washington County on March 14, 1837 and is buried in a small cemetery on Hidalgo Bluff. He had no idea that the land he owned would become a part of the City of Houston or that it would include River Oaks, Greenway Plaza and the City of West University Place. Yet, with an estate valued at $100,000 in 1837, Reynolds seems to have done all right for himself.