• Austin County
  • Bellville (county seat).
  • Buckhorn.
  .
  • New Ulm.
  • San Felipe.
  • Sealy.
• Waller County (est. April 28, 1873)
  • Brookshire (formerly Kellner) (est. 1893).
  • Cedar Creek (est. 1832) - merged into Chappell Hill in Waller county.
  • Fields Store (est. early 1870).
  • Hempstead (county seat) (est. 1856).
  • Katy (est. 1896).
  • Monaville (est. 1886).
  • Pattison (est. 1877).
  • Pine Island (est. late 1870).
  • Prairie View (est. 1879).
  • Reid's Prairie (est. ) early settlement, absorbed into Hempstead.
  • Second Corinth (est. ).
  • Shiloh (est. 1860-1870).
  • Sunny Side (est. 1866).
  • Waller (est. 1884).
• Washington County
  • Brenham (county seat).
  • Caney Creek: (Caney Creek is a Stream in Washington County near the Buckhorn community. It forms a large part of the Washington-Austin county line.) [8]
  • Chappell Hill.
  • Washington-on-the-Brazos (site of 1836 Convention and signing of Texas Declaration of Independence).

When Texas gained its independence from Mexico (1836), the areas occupied by Bellville and Hempstead were in Austin's Colony, one on each side of the Brazos River.

Moses Austin was the first to take advantage of the Spanish-Mexican offer of land for settlers in 1820. After his death the next year, his son, Stephen F. Austin, took over the enterprise, expanding it to include a large part of what is Texas today. It was called Austin's Colony. It was traversed by the Colorado and Brazos Rivers and consisted of

Austin advertised the available land in the United States, the 12-1/2 cents per acre being much less than in the U.S. and the land was rich and fertile, excellent farm land and herds of wild horses and cattle roamed the land. It supported crops of cotton, corn, potatoes, pumpkins, melons, etc. and fruit trees and vines. Cotton quickly became the primary crop.

Some came overland by horse, wagon, or foot, while many others sailed from New Orleans and Mobile to the Texas port cities of Brazoria and Matagorda.

The colonial capital was San Felipe de Austin, established in 1823 by Stephen Austin near the site of McFarland's Ferry on the west side of the Brazos River where the Old San Antonio Road crossed. It became the social, economic, and political center of the Austin colony. In 1835 it became the provisional capital of the new Republic of Texas, but it was burned in 1836 to prevent its capture by Mexican troops. [9]

Bellville was initially settled in 1838 and in 1846 it was made the county seat of Austin County. The town was surveyed and laid out in 1848. The Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe Railroad reached it in the winter of 1879–80 and its population increased from 300 to 522. [10]

Austin County began to be settled in the early 1820s. The early settlers were attracted to the well-timbered, rich, alluvial bottomlands of the Brazos and other major streams; the especially prized tracts combined woodland with prairie. Most of the immigrants came from Southern states, and many brought slaves. By the late 1820s these more prosperous settlers had begun to establish cotton plantations, emulating the example of Jared Groce, who settled with some ninety slaves on the east bank of the Brazos above the site of San Felipe and in 1822 raised what was probably the first cotton crop in Texas. In 1834 more than one-third of the 1,000 inhabitants of the future county were African Americans. [11]

Hempstead was founded December 29, 1856 by R. Peebles and Jas. W. McDade. [12]