Davisville

Davisville (sometimes referenced in the context of a proposed or attempted settlement) was an extremely short-lived and ultimately non-operational rural post-office designation in San Jacinto County, Texas, in the East Texas piney woods region.

Like many tiny 19th-century crossroads or proposed store sites in the county, it appears only in U.S. Post Office Department records and is listed in historical compilations of Texas post offices as a defunct entry. No evidence exists of a formal settlement, school, church, cemetery, store, or sustained community. It never developed beyond a paperwork authorization and is absent from county histories, the Handbook of Texas, San Jacinto County Historical Commission materials, Texas Almanac detailed entries, historical atlases, or genealogical records.

Post Office and Timeline
The only documentation is a single U.S. Post Office authorization:Established (on paper): July 18, 1894
Postmaster appointed: Samuel H. Delany (also spelled Delaney in some records)
Discontinued: August 16, 1895

Status note:
“No papers (Never in operation)” Mail service was never actually implemented, and the office produced no records or operations.

This was not uncommon in the 1890s East Texas timber and agricultural expansion era; many proposed post offices in remote areas were authorized but quickly abandoned when no viable community or merchant emerged to sustain them. Davisville is classified in Texas historical place lists as a defunct town that “Currently Exists: No.”

Location and Coordinates
No exact historical coordinates, plat maps, modern GPS markers, or even approximate road/trail references for Davisville appear in any available sources (including 19th-century gazetteers, county maps, GLO land records, or historical atlases). Because it was authorized in the same general period as other small San Jacinto County post offices (e.g., Clermont, Dolive, Velpo), it was almost certainly in the rural, heavily forested interior of the county amid pine timberlands and small farms.

Early Founders, Families, and Biographies
Virtually nothing is documented beyond the single appointed postmaster. Extensive searches across post-office records, county histories, census references (1880–1900), genealogy databases, and local historical sources turned up no additional names, land grants, settler lists, family genealogies, or biographies explicitly linked to Davisville.

Samuel H. Delany (or Delaney) (postmaster-designate, 1894):
The only named individual. No biographical details, census entries, obituaries, land records, or family information specifically tied to him and Davisville appear in searchable historical sources. He may have been a local farmer or merchant who applied for (or was nominated for) the post office at a proposed store or homestead site, but the effort failed before any operations began. No further public record connects him to the place.

Summary of What Is Known
Existence: Confirmed only as a paper post-office authorization in 1894–1895 that was never implemented.
Scale: Non-existent in practice; a proposed (but unrealized) tiny crossroads or homestead site.
Historical significance: Illustrates the speculative and often unsuccessful nature of rural post-office establishments during East Texas’s late-19th-century expansion.
Surviving traces: None visible today—no marker, cemetery, ruins, or roads named after it in standard references.

In comparison to even the obscure Clermont Settlement (which at least operated briefly), Davisville left an even fainter historical footprint because it never functioned. Local archives (San Jacinto County Clerk’s office in Coldspring, tax rolls, deeds, or unpublished San Jacinto County Historical Commission materials) might contain private mentions of Samuel H. Delany or a related Davis family homestead, but no such details are available in publicly accessible online or published records.If you have family lore, specific surnames, or access to local microfilm/ledgers connecting anyone to Davisville, that could unlock more; otherwise, this exhausts everything documented about the Davisville Settlement.