The Colony of Kent

Background

The following is a newspaper article about the Colony or City of Kent.  I believe that this article pertains to the Wood family for the following reasons:

1,  The organizer of the colony was Sir Edward Belcher.  In a letter from Hugh Wood to his brother, James, Hugh states that he has heard that money previously invested in land in Texas can be returned if James petitions Sir Edward Belcher after he returns from South America.   Our family history states that James and Isabella arrived in Texas to find that they didn’t own the land they had paid for and that they had been swindled.  Well….not exactly.  I believe that James and Isabella were the second supply of colonist.  Yes, they had purchased land in Texas, but the colony had failed before they arrived and, based on the terms of the contract, the land had reverted back to Mr. Kimball.

2.  Also, this article mentions that the man responsible for managing the colonist was Capt. Charles MacKenzie. Isabella Wood wrote a letter back to Scotland and names Capt. MacKenzie as the man who was leading their party to the Ft. Graham area.  Ft. Graham was across the Brazos River from the Colony of Kent.  Capt. MacKenzie’s name is also on the shipping ticket of the Wood’s good up to the Port of Navarro.

3.  The timing of the Woods arrival coincides with the arrival of the second group of colonist to the Colony of Kent. (see Texas Handbook Online entry for Colony of Kent.)

Sunday Tribune-Herald

Waco, Texas

August 15, 1982

A Forgotten Dream

Tragic memories only remains of early-day colony of Kent

By John Banta

Central Texas is full of ghost towns, places that were once ambitious communities but which died, leaving little more than a heap of stones and a few dim memories.

The City of Kent, whose founders had glowing hopes that it would become another Cincinnati or Pittsburgh, died with a year of its birth.  It left no pile of stones, not a trace of physical evidence that it ever existed. But it left many memories, most of them of hardship, tragedy and death.

In the fall of 1850 about 200 middle class people left England to found a city in Central Texas.  They brought with them delicate china, linens and find brandies.

Among the colonists were the Rev. and Mrs. Richard Burton Pidcocke, their four sons and a 20-year-old-daughter, Isabella.

Leading the colonists was young Charles MacKenzie, a former officer in the British army, a bachelor.

During the voyage MacKenzie and Isabella Pidcocke began a shipboard romance, much to the dismay of Isabell’s parents, who wanted her to marry a distant but well-to-do cousin.

The colonists landed at Galveston.  They sent their agent, Sir Edward Belcher, inland to inspect a proposed colony site on Cowhouse Creek, in what is now Coryell County.  Belcher rejected the site because it was too hilly.  Then he looked at a large tract on the west bank of the Brazos River near the spot where Highway 174 crosses the river today.

Belcher liked the Brazos site.  It had a good soil.  Nearby was a big bubbling spring.  Only a few miles away was Fort Graham and an army garrison that could protect the settlers from raiding Indians.

But the biggest attraction of all was the Brazos River itself.  Belcher – incorrectly – believed that the Brazos was navigable all the way to the Gulf of Mexico, and he planned to base the colony’s economy on both agriculture and industry, shipping goods and produce down the river to the Gulf of Mexico, then to the great market places of the world.

Belcher bought 27,000 acres of the land from New York lad speculator Richard B. Kimball through Kimball’s agent, famed Texas land dealer Jacob De Cordova.

Once the land deal was complete, the settlers began the long overland trek from Galveston.  It was winter.  Texas northers chilled them to the bone.  Rains flooded streams, making them impassable for days.

But despite the cold and rain, the romance between Isabella and MacKenzie grew warmer.  By the time the colonists reached Cameron, he had proposed marriage and she had accepted.  Apparently, the elder Pidcockes had weakened in their opposition to the romance because the Rev. Pidcocke performed the ceremony himself.

The settlers passed through the newly established Waco Village and moved on up to what the Rev. Pidcocke called “the promise land.”  Maj. George Erath and Neil McLennan, two Waco surveyors who had laid off the Waco town site, surveyed the streets and lots for the new colony.

It was called the City of Kent.

The settlers tried to plant crops but failed.  They were not used to the physical labor of farming.  A fast-talking Texas horse trader came along and sold them more mules and horses than they could ever have used.  The settlers turned the animals out to graze on open range.  But instead, the horses and mules go into an unfenced 100-acre corn field and destroyed it.  There were other disasters of this nature.

Young MacKenzie tried to run the colony like a military outfit, having the men fall out in formation and march off to work each morning.  He was accompanied about the colony by his valet, who carried his gun for him.

Living conditions were wretched.  Many of the people lived in huts woven from willow branches and plastered with mud.  Others lived in dugouts.  Many died.  Then the army began to pull troops out of Fort Graham, and Indian raids became frequent.

Within a year the City of Kent was empty.  The land reverted back to Kimball under terms of the original sale.  Many settlers went back to England, while others moved to Waco and other communities over Central Texas.  Some of their descendants are still here.

Charles MacKenzie and his bride returned to England, and he rejoined the British army to fight in the Crimean War.  When the Civil War began in this country, they came back to America.  He joined the Union army, was wounded and died on December 7, 1863.  Isabella returned to England and died two years later.

The Rev. and Mrs. Pidcocke and their four sons moved to Coryell County and established a ranch on Cowhouse Creek near the site originally planned for the colony.  The little town of Pidcoke, midway between Gatesville and Copperas Cove, is named for the family by leaves out the second “c” in spelling.

The elder Pidcockes died and were buried in Fort Gates Cemetery.  Years later their sons wanted to erect graver markers for them but could not find their graves.  Instead, they had a stained glass window installed in St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Waco in their memory.

The window is there today.

There is no marker at the site of the City of Kent.