Coffee Station

*Texomans best know Holland Coffee as a historical figure of Preston Bend in Grayson County. Before we called it Preston Bend, locals called it Washita Bend. We can deduce from many accounts that Holland led a colorful life and engaged in extralegal business activities with razor-sharp intelligence. His third trading post along with the saloons in our region in Washita Bend, Coffee Station, hosted alcohol-fueled parties and games for the frontiersmen and Indians.

Native American tribal councils attempted to establish prohibition of alcohol but never successfully wiped out its use by their tribe members and certainly not the renegades. Indians crossed the Red River into Texas to buy liquor, and Coffee Station supplied it to them.

They called one of the games they played at Coffee Station Drink and Smell. A party of Indians would buy a bottle of liquor, then play dice or poker for one to win the bottle, and all the losers could do was sniff the empty bottle after the winner drank it all up. 

Holland and his wife used slave labor to progress his trading post and their plantation, Glen Eden. They went into debt to buy slaves, worked the slaves hard, and kept them until abolition was law.

Holland, a determined soul, behaved dangerously at times. When history looks back on Holland Coffee, it notes that his objective in life motivated him to obtain wealth.

Holland In the Beginning

John Hart, and brothers John and William Baker fenced in 17 acres and built three cabins in 1838 in Washita Bend. The Baker brothers moved on, Hart moved to Warren, Texas, near Beaumont and leased his land to John F. Moody, and Indians murdered Moody. Holland then occupied Hart’s property without a formal lease. John Hart and Holland Coffee knew this area long before the Texas Revolution. Both men traded with the Indians, and Hart fur trapped as far back as 1822 working out of Arkansas. Holland’s partner, Silas Colville, murdered Hart around 1841 which solved Holland’s problems of his occupation of Hart’s property.

Holland was born in 1807 to Ambrose and Mildred Coffee, but they abandoned Holland at age 11. His Uncle Jesse Coffee gave him refuge in McMinnville, Tennessee. In 1829, we find Holland in Fort Smith, Arkansas, with Silas Cheek Colville, James Mayberry Randolph, and other businessmen where they established Coffee, Colville, and Company.**

At Holland’s first settlement on the Red River in 1833, he operated a temporary trading post west of the Cross Timbers at the old Pawnee Village near present-day Petersburg, Oklahoma, where SH 32 turns north with the Red River west of Marietta, Oklahoma.

David Folsom, probably of Choctaw origin, and a reported 12 other Native Americans made this post their headquarters for trading with Comanches, Cherokees, and Creeks. Trails led from this early operation as far as 70 miles out and functioned as trade routes.

At this location, Holland made contact with Sam Houston, who lived among some of the first-removed Cherokees out of the southeastern U.S. This profoundly important historical fact shows how Americans deceptively began to lead the southeastern U.S. Native American tribes through the treaties and events that actuated in the Trail of Tears in 1838. Holland played a major part in the completion of the Camp Holmes Treaty of August 24, 1835, which was the first authorized treaty to force the relocation of the southeastern Native Americans west of the Mississippi River.

In April of 1837, Holland loaded up and established another trading post on Walnut Bayou in Love County near Burney, Oklahoma, where the Red River supplied the only route of travel in that area. By September of that year, Holland had moved south across the Red River to seek his fortune in Washita Bend and called this permanent post Coffee Station.

Holland’s shady trading operations of exchanging guns and whiskey for stolen horses and cattle with the Indians attracted the attention of the 2nd Congress of the Republic of Texas. Holland secured an appointment with President Sam Houston in the winter of 1837 who exonerated Holland of any illegal trading operations and appointed him Indian Agent.

Enter Sophia Suttenfield Auginbaugh Coffee Butt Porter

Holland acquired 3,913 acres in the Washita Bend region. After securing a portion of his wealth and during his travels, he met and married a picturesque lady named Sophia Auginbaugh. Sophia recorded her own involvement in the Texas Revolution and Civil War, but historical accounts widely report that she salted her stories with boastful embellishments.

Sophia relished in her tales of being born into high society and frontier adventures. Her father, William Suttenfield, a colonel in the War of 1812, met her mother, Laura Taylor from Boston, on a passenger sailing ship on the Great Lakes after the war and they settled in and helped build Ft. Wayne, Indiana.

Sophia eloped in 1833 with a high-ranking officer named Jesse Auginbaugh who brought her to Texas and abandoned her in Natchitoches in 1835. Next, Sophia made it to the aftermath of the Battle of San Jacinto and nursed Sam Houston back to health. Sophia met Holland when he served as a representative of the Republic of Texas while she was living with his sister.

In reality, Sophia’s father worked as a laborer in Ft. Wayne, Indiana, after his stint as a foot soldier and commissary supply agent in the War of 1812. Historian Graham Landrum records her first husband’s name as Myron Berbour, who plied his trade as a merchant or druggist and teacher in Ft. Wayne. She lived with Holland without the security of marriage, not his sister. 

Coffee sought and attained Sophia’s divorce to the missing Auginbaugh through his political connections by petitioning congress and married her in 1839. Holland may have married her because of his growing prominence as a congressional representative and a founding citizen of Preston, Texas. After they married, they developed Glen Eden plantation and the town of Preston until Holland’s death.

No doubt exists that when Auginbaugh (or Berbour) abandoned Sophia, she made her way as a camp follower of the soldiers of the Texas Revolution and likely saw incredible action. Sophia’s memories of Coffee Station paint a picture of welcoming and hospitality given to numerous famous and distinguished guests from far away destinations. However, her attempts to forge her reputation as a highbred society lady who nursed the president of the Republic and entertained generals failed to make it into credible historical annals.

Holland and His Many Facets

It is hard to imagine a man who could run frontier outposts with an iron hand as a genteel and polished citizen. Holland almost left Washita Bend because of Indian raids in 1839. The military department of the Republic came to the rescue in 1840 and helped to build the temporary forts of Fort Johnson and Fort Preston. Local men utilized these forts as stations to store supplies and headquarter companies of armed settlers who roamed the region and retaliated against the Indians.

Holland quarreled frequently with his business partners and about assorted deals he made with others. His partnership with John Hart ended up in murder. Hart’s brother sued Holland, not Silas Colville, over Hart’s murder. Assassins attempted to kill Holland in 1842, and no one suspected Indians of that attack.

Holland was not completely without heart as evidenced by his willingness to ransom captured white settlers from the Indians. Holland reportedly knew seven Indian languages and served officially as a translator and an advisor to other Indian agents.

His solid relationships with Native American tribes and the respect the Indians held for him gave him the edge he needed to negotiate numerous trade-offs of goods, which often consisted of a combination of cloth, blankets, beads, and food, for the white captives. Holland generously donated his own stock for the ransoms. Please see the historical marker picture below.

Holland: Stabbed to Death Defending Sophia’s Honor in 1846

Men carried a wounded Holland to one of the forts near Coffee Station because Charles Galloway, a trader from Fort Washita of Durant, stabbed Holland. A witness stated that Galloway caused Holland’s death in self-defense of the last extremity. Galloway remarked offensively about Sophia and Holland attacked him. Holland wrote out a codicil and left everything to Sophia as he lay dying in the fort. ***

Sophia Makes Civil War History

I like to think of Sophia as a very pretty woman but that Glen Eden ensured her destiny as the most beautiful lady in the Republic of Texas at age 31 after Holland’s death, and I want to meet her. One account describes her as physically striking throughout her life, but debt saddled Sophia when Holland died. 

While Holland was alive, Sophia borrowed over $2,000 for the purchase of slaves from T.J. Coffee, Holland’s brother, and signed over all of Holland’s land and buildings to him if she did not repay the debt within two years. Records show that she finally repaid T.J. in 1854. T.J. indeed afforded Sophia generous payment arrangements 

After Holland’s death in 1846, Sophia went on to marry Major Glen Butt who was killed in 1863. In 1865, Sophia married Judge James Porter. Major Butt and Judge Porter lived with her at Glen Eden.

I suppose that Sophia’s crowning glory lies in the somewhat true account that earned her the honor of the “Confederate Lady Paul Revere” during the Civil War. Although the  Texas State Historical Association (TSHA) chronicle contains variants, some truth exists that she did ride muleback to warn Colonel James G. Bourland in Indian Territory that Union troops were camped at her plantation. Sophia either gave the troops enough wine so that they were oblivious to the fact that she had left, or she locked them in her wine cellar so she could leave to warn the colonel. 

Coincidentally, no date is available for Sophia’s ride to save the colonel and his men. Sophia’s “Confederate Lady Paul Revere” adventure smacks identical to the historical revelations of Emily D. West, the real “Yellow Rose of Texas”. Sophia, a contemporary of Emily West, would have been privy to Emily’s involvement with the Mexican soldiers of the Battle of San Jacinto and may have even met Emily.

Sophia joined the Methodist church in Sherman in 1869 and died in 1897. They buried her near Glen Eden. Unfortunately, at the commencement of Lake Texoma, a civic group attempted to take her Glen Eden house apart and rebuild it as a museum, but one of the parties involved accidentally burned its disassembled wood.

*This article is a compilation of four sources. I took the accounts apart and put them back together in a sequence of time. If I posted references within the article, there would be a reference note after almost every sentence. Therefore, I listed my sources without reference notes.

**For more information on Randolph, Colville, and Coffee history, please see my story at LakeTexoma.com/news, Trail Blazing Chickasaw Lawyer, Poet, and Historian: Jessie Elizabeth Randolph Moore, May 11, 2017.

***This fort is either Fort Preston or Fort Johnson, one of which was called Fort Coffee which was 150 yards from the Glen Eden house. Graham Landrum says that Holland was taken to Ft. Washita which was in present-day Durant. The TSHA records that Galloway was a trader from Ft. Washita. The TSHA is more likely to have the correct information on Galloway. Landrum is probably accurate about the location where Galloway killed Holland but misnamed the fort because of what the locals called the fort at the time which accounts for the variances in its recorded names.

1. Landrum, Graham. Grayson County; an illustrated history of Grayson County, Texas.,book, 1960; Fort Worth, Texas. 

https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth24647/?q=landrum

Accessed March 22, 2018), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, texashistory.unt.edu; .

2. Handbook: Handbook of Texas Online, Morris L. Britton, "Coffee, Holland," accessed March 22, 2018,
http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fco12.

3. Handbook of Texas Online, Morris L. Britton, "Porter, Sophia Suttenfield," accessed March 22, 2018, http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fpo18.

4. https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/14165345/sophia-porter

5. No documentation on the accuracy of this account, but it rings with a bit of truth about  Sophia's outlook on life

https://myrahmcilvain.com/2013/04/12/saga-of-sophia-suttonfield-aughinbaugh-coffee-butt-porter/

Pictures

1. Site of Coffee Station

http://www.texasescapes.com/CentralTexasTownsNorth/Preston-Texas.htm

9.   TSHA Marker 051

10. TSHA Marker 052

The following pictures are the courtesy of the Red River Historian website and Robin Cole-Jett. I  queried Robin Cole-Jett and asked permission to use the pictures from the Red River Historian website whiich was graciously given. I  promised Robin full credit. Please visit the Red River Historian website as it contains invaluable Red River historical information and pictures.

This link will take you to the Red River Historian homepage:

http://www.redriverhistorian.com/index.html

Red River Historian Copyright 2000-2018. All rights reserved. All images and copy, unless otherwise noted, were created by Robin Cole Jett. Do not use images without express permission by the photographer. Always cite the source when using information from articles. Link to this site all you want, and I'll link to yours if you ask! All inquiries, contact Robin Cole Jett.

This link on the Red River Historian website will take you to Robin's information on Holland Coffee and Sophia:

http://www.redriverhistorian.com/preston.html

List of Robin Cole Jett’s Pictures Pertaining to this Article

2. Holland’s claim notice in a newspaper 

3. Glen Eden and Sophia

4. Holland’s tomb at Glen Eden—the original Glen Eden brick kiln

5. A surviving outbuilding of Coffee Station

6. James and Sophia Porter’s grave monuments

7. Holland Coffee’s relocated grave marker

8. Possibly Sophia’s original gravestone