Carpenters Bayou rises at the south end of Sheldon Reservoir in southeastern Harris County (29.85°N, -95.16667°W), Texas, USA. The bayou waterway routes southeast for about twelve miles until it joins Buffalo Bayou at the San Jacinto Battleground State Historic Site (29.75°N, -95.1°W).

History

The bayou's name commemorates David Carpenter, a partner of William Harris as one of Stephen F. Austin's "Old Three Hundred" families of Austin's Colony in what later became Texas. Carpenter and Harris received a sitio of land in present Harris County, Texas on August 16, 1824, which fronted on Carpenter's Bayou in southeastern Harris County, near San Felipe de Austin. Carpenter was a blacksmith, and a single man at the time of the grant. He may have died as early as 1828, the year that Noah Smithwick bought his blacksmith's outfit in San Felipe.