Concern For Fort Bend DAily Updates Includes Nonprofits

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From the time the Imperial Sugar Company began its operation in Sugar Land in 1906, and throughout the years, the company owned virtually everything else in the town. Imperial owned the land, the mercantile, feed store, a pharmacy, the bank, to the grocery store, and an auto dealership which made Sugar Land a true company town. What you bought was paid out of the Imperial paycheck. But unlike many company towns such as the mining towns in Kentucky and West Virginia or the mill towns in New England where poverty persisted, Sugar Land was a very good place to live and work. The Imperial model was not the same because it created a successful "company town" run in virtually all aspects by the Imperial Sugar Company. 

This was due in large part to the generosity of Mr. Ike Kempner, owner of Imperial, who poured much of his profits back into the town for housing, streets, schools, shopping, infrastructure, and employee pay, benefits, and doctors. I.H. Kempner was from Galveston. Ike continued to live there. He wanted a stable workforce by building amenities and invested greatly in the schools and hospitals knowing that families were essential to his town's and company's success. Mr. William Eldridge was Kempner's partner in the sense that he managed the Sugar Land company town, sometimes sternly but almost always fairly. He was considered the hands-on company manager and was greatly missed after his death in 1932.

Talk to any of the people who worked for Imperial, or their children, and they will say that Sugar Land was an ideal place. And it was Kempner's vision to have a kind of capitalist utopia. This company town was more a utopia, one man's vision of the perfect melding of company worker and municipal citizen.

By 1950, Imperial was automated and production up 25 percent after the war's rationing. But by the mid-50's, Kempner wanted out of the land business, especially after the death of his son Herbert in 1953, who had been most responsible for operations of the company and the town. Nearly all of the towns in Fort Bend County were considering incorporation, so there was a natural protectionism that arose, so other towns did not encroach. Sugar Land began an inexorable move towards incorporation to avoid Stafford and Missouri City because both communities allowed gambling and saloons, establishments that Sugar Land was dead set against. Sugar Land residents (with the blessing of Imperial and Sugar Land Industries) hurried to build a quorum of residents and file the necessary papers. Kempner began selling the 500 plus homes owned by the company, for very fair prices, and supported the initiative to incorporate.

1835 - Despairing of the chance for security and peace, Austin hopes Mexico will sell Texas to the U.S. He is eager for immigration to increase so Texas becomes more "Americanized." Soon it does. with the repeal of the Law of April 6, 1830, a thousand immigrants per month begin to arrive at the mouth of the Brazos.

January 1836 - As revolutionary fever mounts, the provisional state government dispatches Austin to the U.S. to raise funds for a war effort. He has calling cards printed for the mission, which will take him from New Orleans to Washington, D.C. and New York City. The cards read simply, "Stephen F. Austin, of Texas."

February 1836 - A courier rides through the colony bringing a letter from Colonel William B. Travis calling for reinforcements at the Alamo. At Stafford, an 11-year-old girl, Dilue Rose, melts lead and molds bullets for the volunteers going to join Texas General Sam Houston's army.

March 1836 - Texas declares independence from Mexico on March 2. News reaches the colony of the March 6 fall of the Alamo. A dispatch from General Houston instructs the settlers to leave. With the Texas army in retreat, the advance of the Mexican army led by Santa Anna sparks a panic, known as the "Runaway Scrape." Many Texians (residents of Mexican Texas), including families in this vicinity fled eastward. Families flee for 100 miles or more. Wiley Martin defends the Brazos River crossing at Fort Bend until his troops are maneuvered out of the way and Santa Anna transports part of his army across present- day Sugar Land before his defeat at The Battle of San Jacinto.

April 1836 - Santa Anna is defeated by General Houston at San Jacinto on April 21. When the Fort Settlement colonists return, they find their homes looted, livestock scattered, and fields burned.

June 1836 - Austin returns to Texas. He fails in a campaign to become the first President of the Republic of Texas when the popular General Houston enters the race two weeks before the September election. Houston wins in a landslide and asks Austin to serve as secretary of state.

December 1836 - Stephen F. Austin is stricken with pneumonia and dies at age 43 in the village of Columbia, the first capital of Texas. His body is carried on a steamship down the Brazos for burial at his family's plantation at Peach Point. "The Father of Texas is no more! The first pioneer of the wilderness has departed," reads the official notice. All military posts in the republic fire a 23-gun salute, one volley for each county.

I837 - Fort Bend County is formed. Jane Long has sold a portion of her league to Robert Handy to develop the town of Richmond, which becomes one of the first cities granted a charter by the Republic of Texas. Long opens a hotel and boarding house in town. She makes her home on Long Plantation outside the city, residing there until her death in 1880.

1838 - Fort Bend County elects its first chief justice and county commissioners. Citizens vote Richmond as the county seat.

1838 - Samuel Williams transfers ownership of the Oakland property to his brother Nathaniel, who pays just over $13,000 for it. Nathaniel and a third brother, Matthew, run the plantation and grow cotton, corn, and sugarcane.

1839 - The first newspaper is published in the county, the weekly "Richmond Telescope." The first church is established in Richmond when a Methodist missionary arrives.

1840 - Sugarcane is planted on Oakland Plantation where it flourishes. Sugar from the region is considered superior, containing more juice than the sugarcane in Louisiana. The five-county area is known as the "Sugar Bowl of Texas."

1843 - The Williams brothers install a mule-powered commercial sugar mill along the west bank of Oyster Creek, just a few yards from the Char house still standing in the old Imperial refinery complex. In the fields of the William's Oakland Plantation overseers on horseback managed enslaved persons as they planted, cultivated, and harvested sugar cane and transported it to the sugar mill. Many years later, this becomes the location of Imperial Sugar, making the company the oldest business in Texas still manufacturing the same products on the same site.

1845 - Texas is annexed in the U.S. in December 29 and becomes the 28th state.

1849 - The first Fort Bend County courthouse is completed.

1850 - Fort Bend County contains 109 farms totaling nearly 11,000 improved acres. It is one of only six counties in the state with a slave majority.

1851 - The second President of Texas, Mirabeau B. Lamar retires to Richmond. He builds a plantation home on land purchased from Jane Long.

1852 - The Male and Female Academy opens as the first school in Richmond.

1853 - The Oakland Plantation is sold to W. J. Kyle and B.F. Terry, two prospectors who earned fortunes in California gold mines. They rename the property Sugar Land, and it becomes the social center of the area. Terry's opulent home included a ballroom and was close to a horse racetrack. His home and racetrack were located near today's Sugar Mill Elementary School. Business was good and the partners started expanding their plantation by buying neighboring properties. Within five years they purchase another 8,000 adjoining acres. By 1861 Terry is one of the wealthiest men in the state.

1853 - The first train arrives along the first railroad in Texas, which connects Harrisburg, near Houston, and Stafford. It will be two years before the railroad is extended to reach the east bank of the Brazos opposite Richmond.

1855 - Forty raw sugar mills operate in the four-county area. Sugar cane replaces cotton as the principal crop on many plantations.

1858 - Fort Bend has five ports or landings on the Brazos: Big Creek, Waters, Richmond, Gaston, and Randon.

1860 - Fort Bend County contains 159 farms totaling more than 20,000 improved acres.

1861 - Texas secedes from the Union. B.F. Terry did not hesitate to express his Confederate secessionist views to visitors. He recruits and leads one of the most famous regiments in the Civil War, the 8th Texas Cavalry known as "Terry's Texas Rangers". The co-owner of Sugar Land died after leading them into war. He died at the age of forty and was buried with honors near his Sugar Land home.

1864 - Kyle who was older, continued to run the plantation. The war and subsequent Reconstruction period drained the area's vitality and decimated its economy. Kyle died three years later, and over time, his heirs sold off the land. B.F. Terry's remains were relocated to Glenwood Cemetery in Houston when the land was sold.

1865 - At a gathering under a broad oak tree on Palmer Plantation, neighboring slaves first hear that they are freed.

1866 - Fort Bend County ranks fourth in the state in cattle assessment, reaching up to 100,000 head.

1868 - In spite of post-war economic troubles, local land remained rich and fertile, awaiting cultivation. Land price dropped after the war, and, in 1868, Littleberry Ambrose Ellis started buying local property in the old Hodge, Battle, and Cartwright leagues west of the Terry/Kyle plantation. He named it Sartartia, after his eldest daughter.

1871 - The Texas Legislature passes a law requiring that state convicts be leased to entrepreneurs as laborers. Sixty convicts are leased to work on Fort Bend County plantations.

1875 - Brazos River flooding causes most Richmond merchants to lose their business holdings. Cotton begins to serve as currency, and a tenant-farming system evolves.

1878 - Littleberry Ellis joined Confederate Colonel Edward H. Cunningham to run the state's penal system. When slavery ended after the war, there were not enough workers to cultivate crops, so they began using convicts on their personal land. They also contracted convicts out to other plantation owners across Texas. Convict leasing was a state institution and practiced throughout the southern United States.

1880 - After the city of Richmond refuses to give right-of-way, the Gulf, Colorado, and Santa Fe Railway extends its track to a small community three miles west and builds the Rosenberg Junction depot, named after the president of the railroad, Henry von Rosenberg. New railroad routes pass through productive farmlands and attract new settlers, many of whom are immigrants from Central Europe.

1883 - The state resumed control of the penal system, instituting its own convict lease system. Cunningham and Ellis amicably severed business ties. E.H. Cunningham started buying neighboring properties, including the Terry/Kyle plantation, sugar mill, and gin. He amassed between twelve and fifteen thousand acres, leasing convicts from state to work his land. The convict contract and lease systems replaced slavery as the source of backbreaking, intense labor needed to grow sugar cane and other crops on large plantations.

1883 - The new owner of Sugar Plantation, E.H. Cunningham, and his neighbor, Littleberry Ellis, combine their acreage and build a 600-ton raw sugar mill which they name the Imperial Mill.

1889 - A feud for political control of Fort Bend County culminates in "The Battle of Richmond" on August 16, a gun skirmish between the Jaybird and Woodpecker factions.

1890 - Real estate investors try to promote Missouri City to buyers from St. Louis and surrounding Missouri towns, calling it a "land of genial sunshine and eternal summer." Five years later one of the worst blizzards in Gulf Coast history dumps 24 inches of snow on the city.

1894 - Wells Fargo Company opens a Rosenberg office. The freight agent handles the rail shipment of all kinds of cargo, from livestock to gold and silver bullion. Local men armed with rifles and pistols are hired to guard shipments at the train depot.

1896 - The state's first sugar refinery is built at Sugar Land on the site of the original raw sugar mill dating from 1843. The first white, free flowing refined sugar is successfully introduced to Texas and the Midwest.

1899 - Eleven days of rainfall produce the greatest Brazos River flood on record. Twelve thousand square miles are flooded and 284 people die. Thousands are left homeless. Property damage totals more than $9 million.

1900 - A harsh winter destroys most of the sugarcane crops. Many local farmers stop producing sugar in favor of other crops. The sugar refinery begins importing raw sugar from offshore. Civilian labor is scarce, and the plantation is manned by the largest convict population in the state.

1900 - Flooding from the Great Storm at Galveston claims 84 lives in Fort Bend County. Many families are left homeless and destitute.

1900 - Electricity comes to Fort Bend with the creation of the Richmond Electric company.

1901 - Rice farming is introduced in the county. John Miles Frost constructs the first rice canal by damming river waters to irrigate the crop.

1902 - The county's first telephone is installed by stringing wire along a fence line between Booth's Trading Store and the Booth home nearby.

1902 - The city of Rosenberg is incorporated.

1904 - Sugar Land has a seasonal population of 700 people, including four convicts working on farms and on cane fields.

1905 - Imperial Sugar Company is formed by the Kempner family of Galveston and W.T. Eldridge of Eagle Lake to acquire the properties, fields, sugar mills, and refinery of the Ellis Plantation and later, the Cunningham properties at Sugar Land.

1905 - Champion potato growers from Kansas and Missouri discover the prized red shell soil around Simonton. The crops they plant quickly establish Simonton as the potato capital of Texas.

1906 -The building of the Sugar Land company town begins, including houses, city services, retail stores, a restaurant, a lumberyard, rooming houses, a privately owned bank, feed mill, cotton gin, and telephone company. These diverse businesses are operated by Sugarland industries.

1907 - Railroads were vital to Sugar Land, hauling raw materials in and marketable products out. Kempner and Eldridge chartered the narrow-gauge Imperial Valley Railway, which traveled seven miles west of Sugar Land, later incorporating it with the Sugar Land Railway.

1908 - A new county courthouse is completed. In 1908, it is placed on the National Register of Historic Places.

1908 - The first automobile is driven into Richmond, a one-cylinder, two seat red Ford with a top speed of 15 miles per hour.

1910 - Stephen F. Austin's remains are exhumed from Peach Point and buried with the highest honors at the State Cemetery in Austin.

1912 - The practice of convict leasing continued until 1912, when the state outlawed the convict lease system.

1913 - Kemper and Eldridge wanted to attract family-oriented workers to the small, isolated town of Sugar Land. The provided good housing, medical care, an exceptional school, retail establishments, entertainment, and land for churches. They converted the surrounding cane fields to other crops, using tenant farmers, sharecroppers, and migrant workers to cultivate them.

1913 - More than eight miles of levees and twenty miles of drainage ditches are constructed to protect Sugar Land from flooding by the Brazos.

1918 - Sugarland Industries sends its chief engineer to California to copy the architectural plan for what is considered the finest school in the school in the county. Sugar Land's first school is built to match.

1918 - The community church in Sugar Land divides into four denominations. The company donates corner sites in the city and within three years Catholic, Baptist, Methodist, and Presbyterian churches are built.

1919 - The Fort Bend County oil boom begins with a gusher at Blue Ridge Oil Field. From this and future drillings, the county will eventually produce more than 450 million barrels of oil.

1919 - Bessie Urana of Guy, Texas becomes the first woman to register to vote in the county. She is a 36-year-old mother of eight children.

1920 - The discovery of oil turns Rosenberg into a boom town. Its population edges past Richmond's for the first time, 1,279 to 1,273.

1926 - The population of Sugar Land grows to 1,500 people living in 465 company homes.

1927 - The first hard-surfaced roadway in Texas takes travelers from Houston to San Antonio via Rosenberg.

1928 - The county's last sugarcane crop is harvested.

1928 - Local drilling activity uncovers vast sulfur deposits. Fort Bend and other coastal counties start producing more than 90 percent of the world's supply of sulfur.

1930 - More than 40 percent of Fort Bend County acreage is in farmland. Cotton, corn, and sorghum are the principal crops.

1933 - The annual Fort Bend County Fair is organized. A site is leased where seven exhibition buildings and a racetrack are constructed.

1936 - The Texas Centennial Commission erects a monument to commemorate Fort Bend's role in the Texas Revolution.

1943 - The original Fort Bend County Fairgrounds serves as a POW camp during World War II. The prisoners work at local farms and industries to offset the absence of men who have gone to war. 

1945 - Albert George and his wife Mamie, granddaughter of Old 300 colonist Henry Jones, create the George Foundation, a private charitable trust benefiting the people of Fort Bend County. The foundation generously funds health care services, education, libraries, museums, parks, and recreational facilities.

1946 - Richmond, Rosenberg, and surrounding school districts join in forming the Lamar Consolidated Independent School District.

1947 - The Fort Bend County Library is founded by 12 Rosenberg women. The first radio station begins broadcasting in the county.

1950 - For the first time, homesites are offered for private ownership in Sugar Land. Lot prices begin at $500, and a housing boom result.

1958 - Construction begins on the Southwest Freeway, which will open Fort Bend County to rapid growth from Houston.

1958 - Imperial sugar began selling rent houses on the Hill to create enough property owners for Sugar Land to qualify for incorporation.

1959 - Prompted by their fear of being annexed by Houston or neighboring towns, the people of Sugar Land voted to incorporate.

1959 - Several months before incorporation, school districts in Sugar Land and Missouri City consolidated to form Fort Bend Independent School District. I.H. Kempner, Sr. donated the land for the new school. The people of Sugar Land wanted to name the school after him; however, he humbly declined, stating the school should be named for someone more auspicious. Voters selected the recently- deceased Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles.

1959 - Dulles High School opens, the initial campus from which Fort Bend Independent School District will grow.

December 29, 1959 - Sugar Land, a newly incorporated city, elects its first mayor and alderpersons.

December 1961 - The Southwest Freeway was completed from downtown Houston to Highway 90A, opening the door to historic Sugar Land. The Kemper family still owned large amounts of the city and looked for buyers who would continue the spirit of master planning that began during Sugar Land's company town era.

1969 - The 1,200-acre Sugar Creek subdivision opened.

1969 - Quail Valley in Missouri City is developed as the first master-planned community in the county. Before the end of the century, Fort Bend County will lead the nation with more than a dozen master-planned communities.

1972 - Sugarland Industries sells 7,500 acres to Gerald Hines Interests for the development of First Colony. It is one of the largest sales in Texas history.

1977 - First Colony and other neighborhoods developed under the city's strict planning and zoning laws.

1984 - Brazos Bend State Park opens on 4,900 acres originally part of the Abner Harris and William Barrett land grants.

1987 - The George Memorial Library opens as the first building in a countywide library system.

1990 - Over the last 10 years, the population of the county has nearly doubled from 130,960 to 225,421. As the 20th century ends, Fort Bend ranks as one of the fastest growing counties in the United States. 

December 2001 - One hundred and eighty years after the first colonists built a fort on the bend of the Brazos, ground is broken on Sugar land Town Square honoring Stephen F. Austin and the history of Fort Bend County.