Retreat, Texas, Grimes County Ghost Town. (original) (raw)

History in a Pecan Shell

The community began life in 1851 as a stage stop between Houston and Anderson. It took its name from Groces's Retreat, the plantation once owned by Jared E. Groce, a member of Austin's Colony who is said to have brought in the first crop of cotton in Austin's Colony in 1822. Retreat used the nearby town of Courtney for its rail connection on the Houston and Texas Railroad.

After the Civil War, many Black families moved in and began farming. Storekeeper Joseph Clark was the town's postmaster in the mid 1880s when Retreat counted seventy-five residents.

The town had its own gin and gristmill as well as a school and church. The population dropped to just 50 in the 1890s. Black residents built Pleasant Hill Baptist church in the first years of the 20th Century and the town remained a farming community. Retreat's nearness to Navasota curtailed it's growth and over the years, the population drifted away. The last population estimate in the 1980s reported two families residing in Retreat, but there was no count after that.

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