people · updated 2026-08-29
Annie Hamilton
confidence: single-source weakest: ev-0039
Annie Hamilton, the Cuero landowner whose railroad deal created the townsite that became Three Rivers
The landowner whose deal with the railroad is the actual origin point of the town of Three Rivers — nine years before Charles Tips ever placed a glass-industry advertisement. She and her son Thornton agreed to pay the San Antonio, Uvalde and Gulf Railroad Company a $5,000 bonus to route the line through their land, in exchange for a depot and a new town named “Hamiltonburg.”
Per Michael David Smith’s 1989 book, the Hamiltons agreed to pay the San Antonio, Uvalde and Gulf Railroad Company $5,000 to route the line through their property, in exchange for a depot station named after them (“Hamiltonburg”). Tips organized investors to buy a 200-acre tract from the Hamiltons that included the depot site, covering that bonus. [ev-0039]
The transaction, per Tips’ memoir
Tips dealt with the family directly. Annie Thornton Hamilton was a widow living in Cuero with three sons — Thornton, Alexander, and Leroy (Tips had known Leroy at the University of Texas). The eldest, Thornton, held his mother’s power of attorney and handled essentially all the business.
Two separate deals resulted:
- The ranch land. Tips took an exclusive sales contract at a net $25.00 per acre to Mrs. Hamilton. The land “had been worth probably $5.00 per acre before the building of the railroad” — a fivefold uplift the family captured.
- The townsite. A 200-acre tract on the north edge of the ranch was carved out at $100 per acre ($20,000), and the buyer — a townsite company Thornton himself proposed, capitalized at $30,000 — also had to absorb the family’s entire $5,000 railroad bonus.
The Hamiltons took $8,000 of the townsite company’s stock, paid out of the land purchase price. Tips sold the remaining $22,000 to his family, friends, and his father’s bank customers, and took his 5% selling commission in stock.
Tips named streets for the family: Leroy, Thornton, and Alexander Streets for the three brothers, and Graham Avenue for Thornton’s wife, Agnes Graham Hamilton. The town’s original name, Hamiltonburg, honored this family directly; it was changed to Three Rivers in 1914 at Tips’ own suggestion. Tips’ closing assessment: “As far as I can recall, no member of the Hamilton family visited the new town in its early days and I am sure that not one of them ever spent one night there.”