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RHF reps present at the East Texas Historical Association in Paris, Texas. Feb 21, 2009!

The Redbone Heritage Foundation is happy to announce our 5th annual conference Angelina Co., Texas

in the beautiful & historic city of

 

Details are incomplete, please check back for scheduling updates.

For the first time in history a documentary film has been completed on the East Texas Redbones. 

 

Title: 

THE EAST TEXAS REDBONES: IN SEARCH OF THE ANCIENT ONES.....Chronicles of the Nash and Goyens families

 

This film explores the East Texas Redbone Nash, Goyens and Goins families that were located along the Camino de Real from Natchitoches, Louisiana to Nacogdoches, Texas.  The film in particular chronicles the Thomas Nash and William Goyens Jr. families of East Texas.  It also attempts to discover the Native American (and other origins) of the East Texas Redbones located along the Camino de Real.

Other families mentioned in the film include Sweat, Bass, Ashworth and others.

Filmed in historic Native American locations in East Texas here are some of the locations filmed.

Caddoan Mounds State Park

Caddoan Mounds State Park Museum

The Historic Site and Marker of the Neches Native American tribes Indian Village located on the Camino de Real

Love's Lookout, a historic Ridge point in East Texas

Goyen's Hill, resting place of William Goyens Jr. and a Spanish/Mexican/Native American burial ground

William Goyens Jr. Historical Marker in Nacogdoches Texas

Caddo Mills Cemetery

TOPICS DISCUSSED

East Texas Redbone Ethnic Origins

Camino de Real History and Caddoan Mounds History

William Goyens Jr. history by Cyndie Goins Hoelscher

Thomas Nash and Benjamin Nash history by Stacy Webb

Interview with Stacy Webb on East Texas Redbones

DNA discussions and results of East Texas Redbones

East Texas Redbone Culture

The Mixed Ancestry heritage of the Archer and Miller families of Louisiana and Texas

Discussion on the historical terms "Melungeon" and "Redbone" and the identity associated with them

This film will premier at the Redbone Heritage Foundation Conference this year.  Afterwards it will only be available to RHF membership. The film is the first of a series of documentaries to include other Redbone families, their history and genealogy.

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The Redbone Heritage Foundation is excited to launch a new and exciting project during our Fifth Annual Conference and we are asking for your contributions.

We are compiling a beautiful heritage, perfect bound, hard-cover book entitled: Redbone Women: Stories of Faith, Endurance and Courage.  We would like stories from all Redbone families in Southwest Louisiana and Eastern Texas and pictures of these amazing women. 

We live and learn by their examples to us and their life stories should be cherished and preserved. 

 

Folk stories which show how they lived and what they did

Stories which show their philosophies on life

Stories that show heritage or their lineage.

Stories that show what they had to deal with in life

humorous stories, tragic stories

Photos and Portraits of women of faith, courage and endurance

Names and acknowledgement of all contributors of the stories will be included with each Redbone Woman submission. 

The publication date is yet to be determined, but the books will be made available through the Redbone Heritage Foundation and at all conferences.   

 

For information on how to have your Redbone Women ancestor included, contact Cyndie Goins Hoelscher, Project Coordinator at Cyndith@hotmail.com.  Please put Redbone Women in the subject line. 
 

 

 

 

Limited seating Available Pre-Registrations and walk in's are always welcome. Contact Stacy R Webb @ Parrotsgrl@aol.com

 

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Angelina County genealogy:

Angelina County Texas Genealogy

Other Sites of interest:

Burke, Texas

Early Angelina County

Burke is located in southwestern Angelina County, which was formed in 1846 from the southern part of Nacogdoches County. Angelina County lies between the northwesterly flowing Neches and Angelina Rivers, which provided the first easy commercial access to the county via steamboats as well as the first way to transport the county's timber resources to market.

Angelina County is shown below in Stephen F. Austin's map of 1830 as an entirely blank area between the Angelina River and Rio Neches devoid of even streams ("Angelina County" notation added). Clearly there was not much of note there at the time.

East Texas (Stephen F. Austin 1830)

The Kisatchie Wold

The geograpy of Angelina County is shaped by a geological feature known as the Kisatchie Wold, which is a ridge that stretches from the Mississippi flood plain to the Rio Grande Valley. It is the edge of a layer of hard limestone that reaches the surface and has resisted erosion to a greater degree than the sourrounding land. It is located just south of Angelina County passing through Tyler, Polk, and Trinity Counties and entering Angelina County at the far southeast end. The flooded rock quarry known as "Blue Hole" is in the Kisatchie Wold. The ridge rises gradually from the Gulf of Mexico an drops off precipitously on the northern edge and reaches heights of 400 to 450 feet above sea level in Tyler County.

The Kisatchie Wold was a barrier to the flow of streams toward the Gulf of Mexico, which caused the Neches River to flow more westerly than other rivers in East Texas. It also provided a natural highway through Lousisiana and East Texas for Indian trails and later roads for white emigrants from the South.

The ridge was considered a formidable obstacle to travel at one time. The Neches River crosses the Kisatchie Wold west of Rockland, and this provided an easy place for early roads to cross. Both the Alabama and Coushatta Traces, both Indian trails, follow the Kisachie Wold through the area, and prior to the Mexican Revolution Anglo settlers used the Indian trails to sneak into Texas. As a result the Spaniards built Fort Teran to prevent illegal entry by the immigrants. The crossing was also used by the Liberty-Nacogdoches Road, which was the primary road between East Texas and the Gulf of Mexico at the time.

The intersection of the Indian trails with the Neches River provided one of the primary points of entry into early Angelina County. As a result the early Anglo population center of the County was in the south end near present day Zavalla. The author's 3rd great grandfather James Parker and 2nd great grandfather Amos Spears originally settled in that area before moving to Lufkin after the railroad was built.

The Hasinai

Early visitors to what later became Angelina County found Indians of the Hasinai tribe inhabiting the Angelina and Neches River valleys. The Hasinai were a branch of the Caddos who inhabited almost the entirety of East Texas and who gave Texas its name from their greeting of "tejas", meaning "friend". Archaelogical investigations show that the Caddos were well established in East Texas by 800 A. D., but the first European encounters by Hernando De Soto did not occur until 1542. The remnants of the Hasinai who did not succumb to European diseases continued to live in their traditional homeland in the Angelina and Neches River valleys through the 1830s. By the early 1840s all Caddo groups had moved to the Brazos River in north Texas to escape the pressure from white settlers moving into East Texas..

Both the Angelina River and Angelina County are named for a Hasinai maiden who helped the early French missionaries and was affectionately know as "the little angel". Angelina County is the only county in Texas named for a woman. Springs such as those near Ryan Chapel Church undoubtedly attracted Native Americans as they did the later white settlers.

Indians from the East

The Caddos were replaced by tribes migrating from the Midwest (Shawnee) and Alabama and Mississippi (Mucogee, Alabama, Coushatta, Biloxi), who were trying to escape from white encroachments in the eastern states. A group of the Shawnee resided for a time in the area known as Shawnee Prairie northeast of Lufkin. The latter groups tended to settle south of Angelina County but some groups lived as far north as the Neches River in Tyler, Polk, and Trinity Counties. A group of Alabama lived in Trinity County on Alabama Creek, a tributary of the Neches lying just outside southwest Angelina County which was named for them. The later white settlement of Alabama Creek was not far from Pine Valley and some families moved back and forth between the two communities.

Although there are no known official Indian sites in the Burke area, the author has heard rumors of arrowhead finds in northeast Burke north of the Angelina Couny Airport. There is also a "tanning vat" in the area that some believe is of Indian origins.

Arrival of Anglo Americans

The first known Anglo-American settlers in Angelina County were the Burris family, perhaps a forebear of the Burrous family of Burke. They settled in 1820 at Burris Prairie, which is located in the northern part of what is now the City of Lufkin.

The first Anglo-American in the Burke area was Tom Bradley, who arrived in 1835 from San Augustine to build a trading post on what came to be known as Bradley Prairie to trade with Indians residing along the Neches River. In the late 1840s cattle raising families such as the Ashworths arrived at Pine Valley several miles southwest of Burke.

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