Grimes County is on the edge of the east Texas pine forests and is named for Jesse Grimes, a signer of the Texas Declaration of Independence and early settler in the area. The county was among the earliest settled by Stephen F. Austin's colonists. Jared Groce occupied acreage in the southeastern part of the county and planted the first cotton crops. He is believed to have operated the first cotton gin in Texas. Grimes County includes buildings dating from the 1830s and plantations. Much of its physical development occurred in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries following the prosperity of small-farm cotton cultivation in this area.
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