Sixth Ward, Houston

The Sixth Ward is a community in Houston, Texas, United States.

The area now called the Old Sixth Ward was originally part of a two-league Mexican land grant issued in 1824 to John Austin, a close friend of Stephen F. Austin. It had been assumed they were cousins but Stephen Austin’s last will and testament referred to John Austin as “my friend and old companion”. Two years after the Allen Brothers purchased the grant from Mr. Austin’s estate in 1836 to establish the city of Houston, Mr. S.P. Hollingsworth filed a survey of the western environs of downtown Houston which included today’s Old Sixth Ward which he divided into large, narrow tracts that ran northward from Buffalo Bayou. By January 1839, several tracts within the Hollingsworth survey had been sold to several prominent Houstonians, including W.R. Baker, James S. Holman, Archibald Wynns, Nathan Kempton and Henry Allen. By 1858, Mr. Baker and his colleagues owned or held mortgages on most of the land in this area. In that same year Mr. Baker engaged the County Surveyor, Mr. Samuel West, to restructure his holdings by replatting them into a lot and block system that defines today’s Old Sixth Ward. The new survey was laid out to the true north as opposed to downtown which was platted at a 45 degree angle to true north. The first sale after the re-platting took place on January 31, 1859, when Mr. Baker sold several blocks to Mr. W.W. Leeland. Construction of homes on the lots began in 1860 but a building boom did not take off until approximately ten years later when Washington Avenue was re-graded.

The Sixth Ward was created out of the northern part of the Fourth Ward in 1876, and is the only ward that does not extend into downtown Houston's historical center, although a fraction of what used to be the ward is considered to be within the boundaries of downtown. The Sixth Ward was created in 1877.

One area of the Sixth Ward was historically called "Chaneyville." The Sixth Ward also has the streets "Chaney Court" and "Chaney Lane." According to Ann Quin Wilson, a historian and a retired land researcher, the "Chaney" name likely originated from the area around the "Chaney Junction," the first railroad stop on the Houston to Washington-on-the-Brazos route of the Houston & Texas Central Railroad.

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