History of Kemah (From the Kipp Collection)

KEMAH, GALVESTON COUNTY, TEXAS

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KEMAH, GALVESTON COUNTY, TEXAS

The heirs of John Flanders received Count Warrant #810 for 1920 acres on April 25, 1851 for his “having fallen with Travis in the Alamo.” One thousand nine hundred and twenty acres in Dimmit County were patented to the heirs on October 17, 1851. [1]

Jonathan D. Waters of Fort Bend County sold 10 acres of the southeast end of the Gouldrich labor on Clear Creek to Charles B. Underhill of Galveston on October 3, 1850. [2] Underhill and his wife Martha Jane sold the same 10 acres to Mrs. Elizabeth S. Justice on June 3, 1853. [3] The widow Justice married Abraham H. Kipp sometime after her husband Stephen died in 1856. Kipp’s son Henry married Elizabeth’s daughter, Mary Elizabeth Justice. In 1875 they moved from Clear Creek to Cedar Bayou, Harris County, where Henry began a shipyard. The business prospered and the Kipps raised a family of nine children there. A half sister, Jane Kipp married James Bradford of Cedar Bayou, who owned a large four masted schooner. [4] Bradford ran his boat from Cedar Bayou along Galveston Bay freighting cordwood, brick, produce, or anything the customers wanted. In 1891 the Bradfords moved back to Clear Creek and lived in the house first built by Jane’s parents. The Kipps and Bradfords acquired the balance of the Gouldrich labor and part of the Muldoon league.

Along the shore line of the village was a shell reef some 20 to 30 feet deep in places. During the 1890s James Bradford sold the shell to the railroad for seventy-five cents a rail car. A spur tract was built across the prairie form Dickinson to haul away the shell. During the excavation of the shell some twenty-five Indian skeletons were unearthed as well as lithic debris (arrow points, stone tools, etc.). Pottery and fire hearths were also found.

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