Texas City traces its roots to small settlements that sprang up along Galveston Bay as early as the 1830's, during the era of the Texas Republic. First came Campbell's Bayou at Virginia Point, home to privateer James Campbell and his family. Campbell had served as Jean LaFitte's trusted lieutenant.

The settlement of Austinia was laid out near the mouth of Moses Lake. Intended as a starting point for a planned railroad to connect Galveston Bay with a town on the Brazos River, the community existed with a few buildings and homes between 1837 and 1839. When the railroad was not built along the proposed route, the settlement disappeared, leaving no trace.

The settlement of Shoal Point, located near the promontory of land that was to become the base of the Texas City Dike, was established by 1839. Almira Bowen, the widow of the original land grantee Sylvester Bowen of Bailey's Prairie in Brazoria County, and her second husband Henry Wilcox established their home one mile south of Shoal Point that year.

The settlement of Shoal Point flourished, partly because of the location of the Half Moon Shoal lighthouse two miles out in the Bay. This lighthouse was one of four built in the Galveston Bay or along the shoreline by the U. S. Government during the pre-Civil War period.

Cattle Ranchers, fruit growers, fishermen, and a succession of lighthouse keepers brought their families to live here. By the 1870's the Shoal Point settlement boasted a post office, a one room school, and a citizenry of approximately fifty families. North of Shoal Point was Dollar Point and Miller's Point, home of German settler Gottfried Moller (sometimes spelled Miller), who came to this part of Texas in 1849. Descendants of the Wilcoxes, Campbells, and Mollers live in Texas City today