BONNER'S FERRY, TEXAS. Bonner's (Bonner) Ferry was an early settlement near the site of the present State Highway 21 bridge on the Neches River in southeast Cherokee County. The site, located where the Rusk-to-Crockett road crossed the river at Matthews Bluff, had probably long been known as a place to cross the river; during the Spanish Colonial period it may have been one of several places where the Old San Antonio Road crossed the Neches, though the evidence is not clear. In November 1846 the Cherokee County Commissioners Court granted a permit to John Stinson to establish a ferry there. In 1851 William N. Bonner assumed the ferry operation, and during the next few years a small settlement grew up known as Bonner's or Bonner Ferry. A local post office operated from 1862 to 1873. The community, however, evidently declined with the coming the railroads, and by the 1880s it no longer appeared on maps. No vestiges of the settlement remained in 1990.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Cherokee County History (Jacksonville, Texas: Cherokee County Historical Commission, 1986). A. Joachim McGraw, John W. Clark, Jr., and Elizabeth A. Robbins, eds., A Texas Legacy: The Old San Antonio Road and the Caminos Reales (Austin: Texas State Department of Highways and Public Transportation, 1991). Hattie Joplin Roach, A History of Cherokee County (Dallas: Southwest, 1934).
