From the Akokisas, to Harrisburg, to Harris County

The land that is now Harris County was first controlled by Spain, and then by Mexico, before becoming a part of the United States. Houston Family Magazine details that Spanish explorers closely journaled their initial contact with the Indigenous tribes of the area. The Akokisas were the original inhabitants of the area and the first report of them made by a non-Indigenous came from Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca after he and his party washed ashore after a shipwreck in 1535.

The Spaniards’ journals gave detailed accounts of the Karankawas or Akokisas peoples who resided in the area we now call the City of Houston, in Harris County. Prior to that record, archaeological evidence unearthed by Moore Archaeological Consulting in 2009, found 2,000 artifacts from the Akokisa Tribe dating back as far as 8,100 BCE

The Texas State Historical Association, in their Handbook of Texas, provides details on the successive arrival of more settlers. This time they were Anglo-Americans coming from New Orleans by boat around 1820 in support of the Mexican Republicans’ charge toward independence from Spain. They also scouted the area for homestead sites, and most of the early pioneers settled along the waterways of the area because it was the surest method of travel.

By the end of December 1836, the First Congress of the Republic of Texas had established Harrisburg County, and also the infant city of Houston. Houston was declared the county seat of Harrisburg, and it wasn’t until 1838 that the modern boundaries we know today were established. Changes continued to come, by the end of 1839 lawmakers had finally settled on a shortening of the name to just Harris County, six years prior to Texas achieving statehood in 1845.

John Richardson Harris
The name Harrisburg County was eventually truncated to just Harris County in honor of early settler John R. Harris.

Harris and his family were from New York and sailed to Texas in their own vessel in 1824. Harris received title to 4,428 acres of land at the junction of Bray’s and Buffalo Bayous, land that makes up Harris County's present-day.

John Harris built a house, store, warehouses, and then a second trading post along with one of his brothers, David Harris. According to the Handbook of Texas, he paid Francis W. Johnson to plot the town of Harrisburg in 1826.

The Harris siblings, John, David, Samuel, and William, were hard at work establishing a shipping business that freighted goods like cotton between Texas and Louisiana. John Harris was focused on building a steam saw and grist mill at Harrisburg in 1829. He traveled to New Orleans in August that year to purchase supplies for his mill and then never returned. He died in New Orleans on August 21, 1829, shortly after contracting Yellow Fever.