KENNER, TEXAS. Kenner, also known as Kenner Prairie, was between Live Oak and Caney creeks twenty-five miles northeast of Matagorda and four miles southwest of Sargent in southeastern Matagorda County. A post office opened at Kenner in 1859, and the next year the community had about seven families, most of them farmers. During the Civil War Kenner was headquarters for the McNeel Coast Guard Mounted Rifles, a reserve company under the command of D. S. (or P. S.) McNeel. The 1870 census enumerated around twenty families at Kenner Prairie, which was served at that time by the Caney post office, as its own post office had closed in 1866. Kenner's post office reopened in 1872 and closed permanently in 1887; mail was sent to Hawkinsville. In 1884 the Kenner population was thirty; in 1899 a Kenner school reported eighteen white students. Though the 1936 county highway map shows a number of dwellings clustered along a graded and drained road at the site of Kenner, the community was not shown on a 1952 map.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Matagorda County Historical Commission, Historic Matagorda County (3 vols., 1986-88).
