Welcome To Our Texas House District 76 History Page

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Sugar Land's roots extend back to the first 300 settlers who came to Texas in the 1820's with Stephen F. Austin, the "Father of Texas." The northern territory of Mexico, Austin negotiated a grant with the Mexican government to bring 300 colonists to settle a large area of land between the San Antonio and Brazos Rivers, which was his first colony in the Mexican territory of Texas. Many brought enslaved persons with them. Heads of families were offered grants of 4,605 acres at a cost of about 12 1/2 cents an acre. Among the earliest colonists to receive land grants in the Sugar Land area were Samuel May Williams, George Brown, Charles Belknap, Elijah Allcorn, William Stafford, Alexander Hodge, and Mills Battle.

Centuries before this area of southeast Texas was settled, water cut through the land creating a large river that stretched from the northern plains of Texas, coursing 840 miles to the Gulf of Mexico. In the 1500's, Spanish gold hunters exploring the area named the river Los Brazos del Dios-the arms of God. It is known today as the Brazos River. One of those early explorers, Cabeza de Vaca, described in his journal their exploration of the prairie land and waterways that included present day Oyster Creek. Grass grew waist high in the red, alluvial soil, enriched from centuries of floods and as deep as twenty feet in some areas. Beyond the river's edge, the soil turned to heavy black clay. Prehistoric animals roamed this region, their ancient remains uncovered centuries later in the riverbed.

Buffalo roamed the area, leaving their distinctive mark on the earth as if just freshly plowed. Deer, wolves, buzzards, owls, and numerous small game such as the prairie chicken were abundant. Colonists brought horses, cattle, oxen and dogs, and planted corn, sweet potatoes, pumpkins, potatoes, and other vegetable along with sugar cane and cotton. In the fall, sleds piled with cotton were pulled to the river, placed on flatboats and sent to market in Houston or 

Galveston. Daily signal dominated their lives, but despite the hardships, the colony flourished.

Mexico granted settlers leagues of land (4,428 acres) and labors of land (177 acres). The leagues were for ranching and the labors were for farming. Stepen F. Austin recognized the area's potential. His first colony was bordered on the north by the Old San Antonio Road which stretched between San Antonio and Nacogdoches, on the east by the Trinity River, on the south by the Gulf of Mexico and on the west by the Lavaca River. For his personal homestead, Austin chose five leagues approximately centered between Richmond, the Imperial refinery and present-day Eldridge Road, an extremely fertile area of the Brazos River and Oyster Creek watersheds. Modern day Sugar Land was within that prime real estate that Austin chose for himself. It was the western portions of present-day Sugar Land.

Most of present-day Sugar Land sits in the bottomlands of the Brazos River and Oyster Creek watersheds. Sediment from repeated floods produced a rich, red-brown alluvial soil that nurtured a vast expanse of tall bluestem prairie grass. Only thin lines of canebrakes and trees winding along the river, creeks, lakes, and streams broke the view.

Pre-1800's

Before settlers started arriving in the early 1820's, the land supported a large variety of plants and animals. Deer, turkey, bear, wild boar, and bison roamed and foraged at will. Native Karankawa and Tonkawa fished, hunted, and gathered food along the Brazos River and Oyster Creek. 

Texas's first historian, Cabeza de Vaca described the nomadic Karankawa as tall, muscular, and wearing few clothes. They traveled in groups and lived in grass huts. They adorned themselves with paint and tattoos, and they wore alligator or shark grease to protect themselves from mosquitoes. Over time, Karankawa numbers declined as a result of disease, wars, and loss of territory caused by European settlers.

1820-1830

Landowners found the rich soil between the Brazos River and Oyster Creek better suited for farming than ranching. They developed plantations of cotton, corn, and sugar cane. Unfortunately, frequent Brazos River floods threatened settlements with destruction. One flood was so severe that the waters of Buffalo Bayou and the Brazos River converged.

1820-1830

Sugar production in Texas developed gradually. Small mule-powered mills in the fields produced enough sugar for personal use. Over time, some farmers grew enough cane to sell raw sugar locally. However, cotton and corn were still the main exports. although slavery was outlawed in Mexican Texas in 1829, landowners continued to use enslaved persons to work on their plantations. After Texas won independence in 1836, markets expanded and more of the land once covered with bluestem prairie grass was planted with cotton, corn, and sugar cane.

Over time, Austin decided to homestead at San Felipe, so he issued his five leagues to other settlers, one of which was Samuel May Williams. From 1823 to 1836, fluent Spanish speaker Samuel May Williams wrote deeds, kept records, and conducted business as chief administrator for Stephen F. Austin. In 1828, he received a league of land for his service. This league is where Sugar Land got its start.

In 1838, Samuel M. Williams sold his league to his brother Nathaniel Felton Williams who with their brother, Matthew Reed Williams, began the Oakland Plantation, named for the many varieties of oak trees in the area. Their younger brother, Matthew, managed it. By the mid 1850's, sugar cane was thriving, and the Williams brothers built a commercial raw sugar mill in the vicinity of the present-day

Imperial Sugar Company refinery in Sugar Land, which is on the west bank of Oyster Creek, just a few yards from the Char House still standing in the old Imperial refinery complex. Raw sugar, much like molasses, was loaded in barrels on flatboats and sent downriver to Houston and Galveston markets. In the fields of the William's Oakland Plantation overseers on horseback managed the slaves. The enslaved people provided the labor needed to plant, cultivate, and harvest their crops and sugar cane which they transported to the mill. After Matthew died in 1852, the plantation was sold in 1853 to Benjamin Franklin Terry and William Jefferson Kyle, planters from Brazoria County, who would be the first to dub this this area "Sugar Land."

Kyle and Terry expanded the Oakland Plantation and negotiated a rail line extension to their property, a move that ensured Sugar Land's future and their success. They negotiated with the Buffalo Bayou, Brazos, and Colorado Railway line to pass nearby. With the new line, their sugar and other crops could be shipped to Houston and did not have to be transported on the river. They also had a cotton gin. Terry and Kyle also introduced a new way to move cane from the fields to the mill, using mule-powered cane cars rolling on portable tracks. Originally called Oakland, they changed it to Sugar Land Plantation, a name that remains today, and in 1858, the area got its first post office. Business was good and the partners started expanding their plantation by buying neighboring properties. The Terry/Kyle plantation, particularly Terry's opulent home, became the area's social center. The house included the ballroom and was close to a horse racetrack. Terry's home and racetrack were located near today's Sugar Mill Elementary School.

B.F. Terry did not hesitate to express his Confederate secessionist views to visitors. He organized and led his famous "Terry's Texas Rangers" into war, dying at age 40 in their first battle. He was buried with honors near his Sugar Land home. 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 in 1864 and, over time, his heirs sold off the land. B.F. Terry's remains were relocated to Glenwood Cemetary in Houston when the land was sold.

After the American Civil War, the Kyle and Terry plantation languished as both died by 1864, and eventually the plantation was purchased by Colonel Edward Hall Cunningham of San Antonio. 

Despite post-war economic troubles, local land remained rich and fertile, awaiting cultivation. Land prices dropped after the war. In 1868, another major landowner in the area after the Civil War, Littleberry Ambrose Ellis bought 2,000 acres of land in the old Hodge, Battle, and Carwright Leagues, just one mile west of the Sugar Land mill and the Terry/Kyle plantation. This included a station on the Southern Pacific tracks, known as Walker Station. Ellis named the plantation Sartartia after his oldest daughter. 

He later added 3,000 acres north of the railroad, most in the Battle League, but some in the Alexander Hodge League. In 1878, Ellis and Confederate Colonel Edward H. Cunningham became partners contracting with the State to use prison convicts for labor. They ran together the state's penal system after the war was over, putting slavery to an end, using convict labor instead. There weren't enough workers to cultivate crops, so convict labor was used on their personal land. They also contracted convicts out to other large plantation owners across Texas. Sugar Land became known as the "Hell Hole on the Brazos" because it was hot, humid, swampy, and mosquito ridden. Moreover, Ellis and Cunningham abused and provided substandard care for the convicts that worked for them. The convict contract and leasing system was a state institution and practiced throughout the southern United States.

The Ellis-Cunninham partnership became very profitable.

In 1883, the partners built a brand new 600-ton raw sugar mill on Ellis' land about a mile west of the Cunningham mill at Sugar Land. They named the mill "Imperial."

Despite their success financially, just a year later, the partnership dissolved with Ellis retaining his original 5,300 acres and the Imperial Mill. He moved to Austin and turned the operation of the plantation over to his two sons, W.O. (Will) Ellis and C.G. Ellis. Raw sugar had a limited market because of its short shelf life. By the late 1800's, it was being refined into a white, granulated product that could be shipped to distant markets. It was Cunningham's business savvy that led to the first sugar refinery in Texas. The growing market for refined sugar in the eastern U.S. inspired E.H. Cunninham to improve his sugar mill and build a refinery. In the early 1890's, a small company town developed around the mill and the refinery to accommodate a seasonal workforce. 

The state resumed control of the penal system in 1883, instituting its own convict lease system. Cunninham and Ellis, amicably severed business ties. E.H. Cunningham started buying neighboring properties, including the Terry/Kyle plantation, sugar mill, and cotton gin. He also built a short haul railroad to bring local cane to his mill and eventually extended it to connect to main rail lines in the 1890's. He amassed between twelve and fifteen thousand acres, leasing convicts from the state to work his land. The Cunningham Refinery opened in 1896, state-of-the-art built at the cost of $1.5 million.

E.H. Cunningham became one of the largest sugar producers in the country, earning him the nickname, as the "Texas Sugar King." The fledgling small town emerged to become a up and coming company town under his ownership that included a store, post office, paper mill, acid plant, feed mill, meat packing plant, potato dehydrating plant, boarding house, and depot. 

Cunningham's success was cut short by a series of misfortune in bad loans, two major floods in 1899, and the Great Storm of 1900 that devastated Galveston and the upper Texas Gulf Coast. Other major setbacks included loss of refinery equipment at sea, plant disease, and poor business management. The flooding destroyed his crops and damaged property. Eventually, he declared bankruptcy. Massive debt forced his company into receivership and moving towards the next chapter of Sugar Land's history as a company town.

Sugar Land's history is permanently displayed in the plaza in the front of Sugar Land City Hall. The following narrative is included in the paving stones that are part of the plaza's foundation.

1500-1700's  

1519 Sailing in search of a fabled passage to the Pacific Ocean, Alonso Alvarez de Pineda becomes the first known European to explore the Gulf coast region, claiming it for Spain and creating the first map of the Texas coast.

1528 - Cabeza de Vaca and survivors of the Narvaez expedition shipwreck between Galveston Island and the Brazos River. They encounter the Karankawa Indians. these nomadic natives inhabit the banks of Oyster Creek where they harvest pecans, persimmons, and freshwater clams. De Vaca lives with them for several years. A century and a half will pass before a European expedition visits this ground again.

1685 – In an ill-fated effort to establish a French colony in Texas, explorer Rene Robert Cavelier Sieur De LaSalle records the Indian name for the Brazos River as Tokohono. La Salle calls it the Maligne.

1690 – For the next 130 years, Spanish rulers attempt to colonize Texas with little success. Settlers, adventurers, soldiers, and missionaries use an old Indian trail across a low water point on Oyster Creek to travel from the Gulf Coast to San Antonio de Bexar, the capital of Spanish Texas. Explorers frequently confuse the Colorado and Brazos rivers.

1721 - By now, the 840-mile-long Brazos de Dios River, with its three branches, has been given its lasting name by the Spanish who travel and trade here. As the longest, mightiest and most navigable river in the territory, it gives rise to many legends.

1800's 

November 1820 - A year after the Panic of 1819 depletes his fortune and stirs unrest in the states, entrepreneur Moses Austin, the father of Stephen Fuller Austin, travels from Missouri across the deserted wilderness to San Antonio seeking a contract to bring settlers into Spanish Texas. It is ambitious plan to restore his wealth.

December 1820 - The governor of Texas refuses Moses Austin and orders him out of Texas. He has a chance meeting with a long-lost friend, the Baron de Bastrop, who is the vice mayor of San Antonio. The Baron intercedes on his behalf. The governor reconsiders and decides in favor of a contract permitting Austin to settle 300 families in Texas and establish a town at the mouth of the Colorado River. The approved contract is received one month later.

June 1821 - Before Moses Austin can begin the colony, he falls ill after a perilous trip home. Two days before dying, he asks his wife Maria to write to his son Stephen with his "father's last request to prosecute the enterprise." Stephen Fuller Austin is 27 years old. He has just moved to New Orleans to study law and work at a newspaper to support his family. He had only reluctantly agreed to help his father with his "Texas Venture."

July 1821 - Expecting that his father has departed New Orleans with a ship of settlers, Stephen F. Austin is in Natchitoches, La., to meet Spanish officials for an overland trip to the land grant. Austin sets out on horseback for Texas. A rider overtakes the group with word of his father's death. Writing his mother that "we must resign ourselves to the dispensations of Providence," he travels on to San Antonio seeking approval to assume his father's contract.

August 1821 - Austin and his party reach the Brazos River, noting the fertile soil, abundant deer and black bear. Across the river are grassy prairies and buffalo. In San Antonio, they learn of Mexico's new independence from Spain. The governor recognizes Austin as the heir to the contract. He takes on the role of "empresario," of colonization agent. Empresarios contract with the Mexican government to bring Roman Catholic settlers to Texas in exchange for 23,000 acres for each 100 families brought.

September 1821 - Austin spends a month exploring between the Lavaca and Brazos rivers for a suitable site. He chooses an area traversed by the Brazos, writing in his journal, "Land is all first rate, plenty of timber, fine water."

October 1821 - Back in Louisiana, Austin receives hundreds of letters from people in Missouri, Kentucky, and other states with an interest in the colony, which has been publicized in newspapers as far east as Baltimore. "I am convinced that I could take on 1,500 families as easy as 300," he writes to the Texas governor.

November 1821 - In New Orleans, Austin begins recruiting, offering settlers thousands of acres apiece for pennies an acre and no money down. By comparison, the U.S. Congress has begun requiring full cash payment up front to purchase public lands, which few frontiersmen can pay. He has no trouble finding volunteers.

November 1821 - Austin purchases a 30-ton schooner, the Lively, and the outfits it to take the first settlers from New Orleans to the colony. Aboard are nearly 20 men carefully chosen to form the nucleus of the colony. Austin has signed special contracts with them providing free land in exchange for their labors. On November 25, they head for the mouth of the Colorado, where the men are to meet Austin, build cabins, stock supplies, and plant at least five acres of corn each.

December 1821 - The Lively is blown far off course and spends weeks at sea.

January 1822 - In a fateful error the crew mistakes the Brazos River for the Colorado and makes landing on New Year's Day. With William W. Little and Joseph Polley in charge, the men travel 90 miles upstream. At a clearing on the river's bend, they construct a large log house known first as "Fort on the Bend," and later, "Fort Bend." When food grows scarce, most of the party returns to the United States, but a few stalwarts remain. In the meantime, Austin searches fruitlessly for the missing Lively party along the coast, concluding they were lost at sea. A handful of settlers have already arrived on the Colorado. Many more are on the way.

March 1822 - With colonists expecting to receive their land grants, Austin rides first to San Antonio and then Mexico City to urgently affirm his contract with officials of the new Mexican government. There, political uncertainty forces him to wait for a full year until a stable government is in place to approve his empresario agreement.

April 1822 - With no contact between the Lively party and the other Austin colonists, rumor persist that the passengers were drowned at sea or starved by Indians. Some of the original passengers eventually return to Texas and tell what happened.

May 1822 - Before the Mexican Congress, Austin claims that 100 men settled along the Colorado and 50 at various points along the Brazos. Only eight have brought their families.

August 1822 - Fifteen settlers arrive at Fort Bend by summer. With no sign of Austin, the few are known as the "Forlorn Fifteen." Newspapers across the western U.S. carry erroneous reports of Austin's demise by drowning, shooting, shipwreck, or Indian attack. Circumstances are dire. Drought devastates crops throughout Texas, and colonists subsist on whatever wild game they can find.

April 1823 - The Mexican Congress finally approves Austin's contract. He is cleared to bring the first 300 American households into Texas under Mexican rule. Austin's total charter is 15,000 square miles. It includes the finest agricultural lands in Texas, plenty of fresh water, lumber, grass, and game. Along the Brazos, prospects are hopeful. "The settlers are perfectly satisfied and determined to stay," writes one observer. By fall, dry weather and hardships return.

1824 - "The Old 300" original colonists begin to settle their land grants. Each married man is eligible to receive a "league," (sitios) or 4,428 acres of grazing land and a "labor," (libors) or 177 acres of farmland. To receive the most land, a settler presents himself as both a rancher and a farmer. Most of the Old 300 are from the southern states and intend to raise corn, cotton, and cattle as they had back home. Forty-one of the initial land grants are located along the Brazos River in the area called Fort Settlement. Jane Long, the "Mother of Texas" who sewed the Lone Star flag first flown in 1820, receives her league there.

1824 - As a compensation for his role as empresario of the colony, Austin awards himself 22 1/2 premium leagues of land, including five leagues along Oyster Creek, which is the western portions of present-day Sugar Land. He will later release these leagues for reissue. Half of his land holdings will be deeded to his New Orleans lender in the venture, and none of it will have cash value for many years. "Whether rich or poor, here I expect to remain permanently," he wrote.

1825 - A census of Austin's colony counts 1,800 inhabitants, including 443 slaves.

1825 - Although the best tracts along the Brazos and Colorado are taken, a large amount of unclaimed land remains in the colony. Austin is granted a second empresario contract to locate five hundred settlers on this land and is permitted to open a port of entry at Galveston. He will ultimately be granted five contracts.

1827 - Austin joins with two other empresarios in negotiating a treaty with the Karankawas. The Mexican military makes peace with the Tawakonis, Wacos, and Comanches. Protecting colonists from Indian raids has preoccupied Austin since 1823.

1828 - Elections are held to create the first civil government in the colony under the state constitution of Coahuila and Texas.

1828 - Austin gives a league of his land on Oyster Creek to his aide, Samuel May Williams, who names the property Oakland Plantation after the five species of oak trees that live there.

1828 - The first recorded flood of the Brazos River erodes the banks along the river's bends and brings down enormous trees.

1829 - Two local ranchers drive a herd of 60 cattle from Ford Settlement to the markets of San Antonio, where they hire a butcher and sell the beef. It is the beginning of the local cattle industry.

1830 - The Mexican Congress passes the Law of April 6, 1830, prohibiting further empresario contracts and thus halting Anglo-American immigration into Texas. Austin writes that it "destroys in one blow the happiness and prosperity of this colony."

April 1833 - Delegates from the colony hold a convention where they draft a petition calling for separate statehood and the repeal of the April 1830 law.

June 1833 - Brazos River flooding contributes to an outbreak of cholera in the area. Even with frequent flooding and variable water levels, the Brazos is the principal waterway into Texas. It is navigable for 250 miles inland. Steamboats and barges ply this course for the next three decades as travel and commerce increase.

1834 - The first school in the settlement opens up at Stafford's Point on Oyster Creek. Seven children attend classes in an old blacksmith shop. School adjourns in September when the boys are needed to work in the fields.

1834 - Austin carries the colonists' petition for separate statehood to Mexico City where he is imprisoned, without formal charges, for treason. He spends the entire year in prison and is detained for another six months before his situation is favorably resolved. When he returns homes in the fall of 1835 the colonists welcome him with a tribute dinner and dance.