Handbook of Texas Online
Sargent, on FM 457, five miles northwest of the Gulf of Mexico and 24 miles southeast of Bay City in the eastern corner of Matagorda County, was named for George Sargent, an Englishman who immigrated to Texas from Cornwall, England, in 1834.
Sargent purchased some bottomland near Caney Creek in 1844 and built a house three or four miles inland from the Gulf between Caney Creek and Cedar Lake.
In those days Caney Creek had deep water and was navigable.
During the Civil War, Sargent was able to ship his beef and cotton undetected from Caney Creek through the Union blockade.
After the war, the Sargents continued in the cattle business.
In the summer of 1875 George Sargent’s son John, with some neighbors, drove more than 3,000 cattle along the Salt Grass and the Chisholm trails to Abilene.
On the return trip they received news of a gulf hurricane.
After riding night and day for three days, the party arrived home on Sept. 17 to find George Sargent’s home gone and Caney Creek at flood tide.
Unable to find his father, John arrived at his own home just as it was breaking up.
He was just in time to save his children from the flood, but his wife was not with them.
The bodies of Sarah and George Sargent were found after the storm had passed, victims of the hurricane that destroyed Indianola.
Other severe storms have made their impact on the area as well.
One source reports that forty refugees from Sargent were billeted in the courthouse in Bay City in the aftermath of the 1934 hurricane.
The most recent hurricane to strike Sargent was Hurricane Carla, which made landfall on September 10, 1961.
According to B.J. Sanford, “The accompanying tidal wave swept inland for nearly ten miles, inundating everything the winds had not destroyed already.” A post office was established at Sargent in 1912 with Mary G.
Montgomery as postmistress.
By 1925 Sargent had a population of twenty-three.
Roads were built in the area by Abel B. Pierce in 1927, and in 1930 Pierce built a city block of houses and a cotton gin in Sargent for his workers.
In 1938 Sargent had a school with three teachers and forty-one white pupils and a school with three teachers and 185 black pupils.
By 1940 Sargent had four businesses and a population of eighty.
Sometime around the end of World War II Sargent lost its post office, but by 1986 service was reinstated.
In 1990 Sargent had a population of seventy-six, with “at least three places serving full meals, a gift shop, a laundromat, several garages, and a number of bait camps.”
The town also had two churches, the Sargent Baptist Church and the Caney Creek Non-Denominational Church.
Area children attended Van Vleck schools.
Today, the Sargent community is thriving, with several new houses and businesses under construction.
It’s weekday population is about 500, but that number typically swells to nearly 5,000 on the weekends.