The first settler at Orange was Rezin Green, who gave the location its name of Green's Bluff. Robert Johnson moved there in 1824; John Harmon arrived in 1830, and during the early 1840s, pioneers named Nathan Cordrey, B. P. Gates, H. B. Force, John Burton, and many others arrived. In 1850 Dr. William Hewson founded a mercantile store there, and was soon followed by Dennis Call.
During the boundary commission survey of May, 1840, the location name was changed to Huntley, but in 1845, following B. P. Gates' first survey, the name was changed to Jefferson. About 1852 the name was altered again to Madison; and in 1858, when the post office objected to a similarity of names, A. N. Reading, the cunty surveyor, renamed the town Orange, after his home town in New Jersey.
The earliest-known occupation in Orange was the manufacture of hand-made cypress shingles. According to Nacogdoches Chronicle of Aug. 16, 1853, R. A. Jackson was building a sawmill there, using a salvaged boiler and engine. In 1852 William Smith and John Merriman, Orange County's largest slaveholder, built Merriman's Mills. H. R. Green was especially complimentary of Merriman's spoke-shaving machine, noting: "...Let a log fall within its reach, and it comes out a wagon forthwith....!"
In 1853 Roderick Random of Nacogdoche wrote that Orange had "4 dry goods stores, a fine complement of grocers, 2 hotels, kept by (B. F.) Force and (John) Taylor. There is also a shipyard...." In Jan. 1846 Charles Baxter's shipyard built the schooner "Creole," and in 1849 Baxter totally rebuilt the superstructure of the steamboat "Angelina." By 1856 there were 3 more sawmills in town, namely, R. A. Neyland's steam shingle mill, Brazee, Woods and Company, and Smith and Hewson's Empire Mills, said to be "the best in Texas," with an 8,000-foot daily cut. The latter was burned down by the Moderators on May 31, 1856 during their search there for 2 alleged murderers.
During May-June, 1856, Orange was the scene of much upheaval, violence, and 12 assassinations between 75 Regulators and 50 Moderators, who strove for control of the town. At the end thirty families, including some wealthy cattlemen, were driven into Louisiana exile, and much of their land and cattle were confiscated. A full-page account of the Orange County War appears in the Galveston Tri-Weekly News of July 15, 1856.
Early religion and education also reached Orange. Until 1852, Orange was a part of Jefferson County, and in May 1847 the county court ordered that precinct 6 elections "be held at the school house in Green's Bluff..." When R. E. Russell began school in Orange in 1854, his first school teacher was Mrs. H. B. Force; in 1853 the school was under the "superintendence" of a Mrs. Hughes. Between 1850 and 1867, Dr. and Mrs. W. Hewson taught a Sabbath school, which at the end had 75 scholars.
When H. R. Green visited Orange in June 1857, he found "8 stores, 2 hotels, 2 doctors, 4 lawyers, 1 blacksmith, 1 shoemaker, 2 butchers, 2 gunsmiths, 1 drug store, 2 shipyards, 2 schools, and 1 saloon...." He attended at that time a Methodist revival in the Masonic building, where there were "...squalling infants terrible enough to carry away.... the human soul itself..."
When Green first saw Orange in 1857, he wrote about "those pretty little houses, so whitely painted, swanlike, esconced like a duck in a nest of roses...." But the misfortunes of the Civil War were soon to alter that idyllic scene completely. Dr. D. C., Hewson's memoirs reported that 3 Orange companies, under Capts. S. F. Baker, S. A. Fairchild, and J. H. Hannah, left for Virginia or elsewhere, and none of them ever returned, all of them being the victims of battle and disease.
And on Sept. 13, 1865, while Orange was still wallowing in the ashes of defeat, a giant hurricane destroyed all but 4 buildings in town; sunk 20 schooners and steamboats at anchor in the harbor; and left a long list of the dead and injured in that once "pretty as a fairy tale" river port city.
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