Historic Brazoria County

HISTORIC 

BRAZORIA 

COUNTY 

An Illustrated History 

by Margaret Swett Henson 

A PUBLICATION OF THE BRAZORIA COUNTY HISTORICAL MUSEUM

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HISTORIC 

BRAZORIA 

COUNTY 

An Illustrated History 

by Margaret Swett Henson 

Published for the Brazoria County Historical Museum 

Historical Publishing Network 

A division of Lammert Publications, Inc. 

San Antonio, Texas

First Edition 

Copyright © 1998 by Historical Publishing Network. 

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, 

including photocopying, without permission in writing from the publisher. All inquiries should be addressed to 

Historical Publishing Network, 8491 Leslie Road, San Antonio, Texas 78254. Phone (210) 688-9008. 

ISBN: 0-9654999-6-0 

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 98-75479 

Historic Brazoria County: An Illustrated History 

author: 

cover artist: 

contributing writer for 

“Sharing the Heritage”: 

Margaret Swett Henson 

Ruth Munson 

Marie Beth Jones 

Historical Publishing Network 

president: 

vice president: 

project manager: 

director of operations: 

administration: 

graphic designer: 

Ron Lammert 

Barry Black 

Pat Steele 

Charles A. Newton, III 

Tammy “Nikki” Gilday 

Donna M. Mata 

Dee Steidle 

Colin Hart 

Brazoria County Historical Museum 

president: 

vice president: 

secretary: 

treasurer: 

board members: 

executive director: 

Waverly Jefferson 

Emma Jean Tanner 

Jim Wiginton 

Glenn Marken 

Quinton Anderson 

Michal Cook 

Doris Fentress 

Garvin Germany 

Douglas J. Gerrard 

Arlette Hardoin 

Kerry Hurt 

Marie Beth Jones 

Eleanor Nabors 

Bridgett Norris 

Gene Pell 

Lois Richardson 

Mary Ann Thomas 

Robert Wright 

Robert T. Handy 

2 ✦ HISTORIC BRAZORIA COUNTY

CONTENTS 

❖ 

PHOTO BY RAMONA TSCHAAR, 

4 INTRODUCTION 

1998 © MIXED MEDIA ADV. 

5 CHAPTER 1 the Brazos River: a magnet for settlement 

in Mexican Texas, 1822-1836 

19 CHAPTER 2 economic recovery and the plantation era: 

the republic, statehood, and civil war, 1836-1865 

25 CHAPTER 3 economic adjustments and political and social 

change, 1865-1890 

33 CHAPTER 4 technology and newcomers change Brazoria 

County, 1890-1940 

53 CHAPTER 5 Dow Chemical, World War II, and the new 

Brazoria County, 1941-1990s 

68 SHARING THE HERITAGE 

136 INDEX 

Contents ✦ 3

INTRODUCTION 

❖ 

Ms. Henson is the consultant and 

research/writer for the Brazoria 

County Historical Museum’s Austin 

Colony exhibit. 



Residents of Brazoria County have always 

been optimistic entrepreneurs. The first settlers 

in the 1820s came to improve their economic 

well-being after a devastating decline in agricultural 

prices caused personal bankruptcies 

throughout the United States. These agrarian 

entrepreneurs included farmers, stock raisers, 

and the merchants who supplied them. Resilient 

as farmers must be, they adjusted to the soil, climate, 

natural disasters, and the changing markets. 

Some abandoned cotton culture for sugar 

or ranching—or combined all three. Merchants 

became bankers, and merchants and planters 

joined to invest in new modes of transportation 

to ship their produce to market. The loss of 

their laborers after the Civil War created another 

system of agricultural labor through sharecropping 

and tenant farming. Towns and the 

merchants adjusted to the needs of these new, 

less affluent consumers. 

The turn of the century brought new economic opportunities for some with the discovery of oil and 

sulphur beneath the surface. New people and new ways to earn a living developed after oil wells penetrated 

the earth and industrial plants moved into Brazoria County. At the same time railways expanded 

to serve industry and residents, and the harbor at the mouth of the Brazos River was improved. 

Ranching and farming continued while land developers brought northerners (weary of snow and ice) 

to the vacant prairies to develop fruit and vegetable farms. The two world wars caused an infusion of 

job seekers and new industries to exploit products made from mineral deposits. In other words, 

Brazoria County residents adjusted to meet the constantly changing economic opportunities. 

The enterprising spirit continues in the last decades of the twentieth century. Chambers of commerce 

actively seek industries and businesses that can contribute to the overall well-being of residents. 

Extractive industries and agriculture endure, but improved technology allows more efficiency and different 

products. Tourism has become a popular way to expand the local economy, but it is not really 

new. Travelers in the 1830s praised the natural bounty and economic promise of the Brazos Valley in 

published books and personal letters which brought more visitors to the area. 

This brief narrative endeavors to explain the cause and effect of select events that took place in 

Brazoria County between the 1820s and the 1990s. Other books and articles are available to amplify 

details, and the Brazoria County Historical Museum has exhibits and programs detailing local history. 

Margaret Swett Henson 

1998 


THE BRAZOS RIVER 

A MAGNET FOR S ETTLEMENT IN M EXICAN T EXAS 

1822-1836 

In December 1821, the small schooner Lively from New Orleans anchored off the mouth of the 

Brazos River. Fourteen immigrants and several investor-adventurer friends of Stephen F. Austin went 

ashore through the surf. Lacking accurate coastal maps for Spanish Texas, the party had landed at the 

Brazos instead of the Colorado River about forty miles to the southwest where they expected to meet 

Austin who was coming overland. The men searched for him up the river and built a cabin in what 

became Fort Bend County. Unable to find the empresario, most of the frustrated pioneers returned to 

the United States in the spring. 

One year earlier Moses Austin, the father of Stephen, had secured an empresario contract from the 

Spanish government to bring 300 families from the Mississippi River Valley to Texas. For the first time 

❖ 

Austin Colony—1837 Map of Texas. 

The Brazos River ✦ 5

❖ 

Stephen F. Austin (1793-1836), 

successful Texas colonizer under 

Mexico (1822-1836). A bachelor, he 

died at the home of George B. 

McKinstry in Columbia while 

Secretary of State of the new Republic 

of Texas. He was buried at Peach 

Point Plantation, but in 1910 his 

remains were moved to the State 

Cemetery in Austin. 

COURTESY OF THE TEXAS STATE LIBRARY 

AND ARCHIVES 

Spanish officials were receptive to the settlement 

of hardy Anglo-American farmers who could 

develop an agrarian economy in their almost 

vacant frontier province. Texas was uninhabited 

except for the tiny towns of San Antonio, La 

Bahia (Goliad), and Nacogdoches, while native 

Americans, some sedentary, others nomadic, 

were scattered from the coast to the plains. Spain 

also expected the Anglos to contain the more 

troublesome tribes. 

Moses Austin had settled south of St. Louis in 

Spanish “Upper Louisiana” in 1798 where he 

developed a lead mine. After the 1803 Louisiana 

Purchase, the elder Austin prospered until the 

end of the War of 1812. Post-war agricultural 

prices fell leading to bankruptcies when banks 

called in defaulted loans. Faced with seizure of 

their property and jail, debtors like Austin and 

other hard-pressed residents of the Mississippi 

Valley viewed Spanish Texas as a refuge. Both distance 

and Spanish law protected them from creditors 

and the newcomers could start over again 

on the generous land grants offered to immigrants. 

Moreover, many Mississippi Valley residents 

expected the United States would soon 

acquire eastern Texas because they believed it 

was part of the Louisiana Purchase. 

Exhausted by his overland journey to San 

Antonio, Moses Austin died after reaching home 

leaving twenty-eight-year-old Stephen the 

responsibility of restoring the family fortune in 

Texas. Retracing his father’s route through 

Natchitoches, Louisiana and Nacogdoches, 

Texas, Stephen reached the lower Colorado River 

but found no one there. He continued to San 

Antonio to see the Spanish governor, who told 

him that he must go immediately to Mexico City 

to reconfirm the contract because Mexico had 

just won its independence from Spain. 

Stephen had already appointed Josiah H. Bell 

his agent to settle on the Brazos and direct settlers 

to the area of the future colony. Austin’s grant 

included the Brazos and Colorado Rivers’ watersheds 

south of the old Spanish Road (today’s State 

Highway 21) to the coast and would later include 

the San Jacinto River on the east and the Lavaca 

River on the west. This particular part of Texas 

resembled the well-watered woodlands east of 

the Mississippi River and was therefore appealing 

to Anglo Americans. The grant did not include 

barren Galveston Island, a strategic site forbidden 

to foreigners for reasons of national security. 

Families began arriving overland from 

Arkansas and Louisiana by wagon while others 

came by boat from New Orleans and other Gulf 

ports. Many of those travelling by wagon were 

frontiersmen who chose homesites in what is 

now Washington, Fayette, and Colorado counties. 

Some coming by schooner were townspeople—merchants 

and planters—who tended to 

cluster along the lower Brazos, the San Jacinto 

River-Buffalo Bayou area east of present-day 

Houston, and Matagorda Bay. San Felipe de 

Austin on the Brazos River, (in Austin County 

and almost due west of Houston) became the 

capital of the colony. Austin presumed the village 

would be the head of river navigation, but that 

dream proved unrealistic—sufficient water 

occurred only during seasonal flooding. Thus 


only the towns of Columbia and Brazoria on the 

lower Brazos River and Harrisburg on Buffalo 

Bayou became commercial depots serving the 

Brazos River community. 

The pioneers encountered few native 

Americans within the area. It had once been home 

to small bands of Karankawas and Tonkawas, 

hunter-gatherers feasting on nuts, berries, 

seafood, small animals, and an occasional buffalo. 

The primitive Karankawas inhabited the coast and 

the barrier islands using dug-out canoes, spears, 

and bows and arrows. The more inland Tonkawas 

sometimes traded with the plains Indians and 

occasionally possessed a few horses and firearms. 

❖ 

A map of Brazoria County—General 

Land Office, February 1918. 


❖ 

The plat for Villa Brazoria. 

Ritual eating of hands of enemy captives by both 

tribes grew into tales of cannibalism, perhaps 

intentionally exaggerated to excuse extermination 

by both Spanish and Anglos. 

Local Indian families had been reduced in 

number because of recent encounters with men 

belonging to Jean Laffite’s settlement on 

Galveston Island between 1817 and 1820. 

Matagorda Bay pioneers responded harshly to 

Indian pilfering and both sides sought revenge 

when conflicts occurred. The only incident in 

Brazoria County took place in 1824, when 

Randal Jones led volunteers to attack a camp of 

thirty braves on Jones Creek near Cedar Lake. 

After losses on both sides, the Indians took refuge 

in the mission at La Bahia on the lower San 

Antonio River. Austin persuaded the priests to 

counsel the Indians not to hunt within his colony, 

an arrangement that ended the Indian troubles in 

the Brazoria area. 

Brazoria County attracted cotton planters with 

its rich alluvial soil and access to water transportation 

to connect with New Orleans markets. 

The rock-free broad, flat prairies were bordered 

by forests and dense canebrakes and were 

watered by small streams. The river, named 

“Brazos de Dios” (Arms of God) by early Spanish 

explorers interested only in mineral deposits— 

not agriculture, appeared as convenient a waterway 

as the Mississippi River. While it was deep 

enough for small schooners for the first twenty 

miles of bends and turns, the river’s sand bars 

and rapids farther upstream hindered boat traffic 

except during high water. Moreover, a pair of 

wide sand bars at the mouth of the river caused 

wrecks to both incoming and exiting vessels if the 

winds and tides were unfavorable. The smaller 

water courses paralleling the river, Oyster Creek 

on the east and the San Bernard River on the 

west, proved useless for commerce, but, like the 

Brazos, both were lined with sugar and cotton 

plantations before the Civil War. 

Anglo-Americans came to Mexican Texas 

because of the generous land grants to settlers. 

Each head of a family, even widows, could claim 

a league (4,428 acres) of pasture land and one 

labor (177 acres) of irrigable farm land along a 

stream. Each of these traditional Hispanic grants 

had to be located as a single unit. A single man 

received 1/3 that amount but could receive the 

full headright when he married. During the colonial 

period (1824-1834), Austin, as empresario, 

screened the colonists applying for land but 

could not issue the titles nor collect fees. The 

state-appointed land commissioner provided 

deeds once the survey had been made and 

arrangements for the payment of the modest fees 

were complete. 

The colonist paid about $192 for the 4,605 

acre headright in fees to the state, surveyor, land 


commissioner, and the person who wrote the 

deed. This was 4 cents per acre in contrast to the 

charges by United States land offices of $1.25 

per acre payable in gold for a minimum purchase 

of 80 acres ($100). In Texas, the buyer had six 

years in which to pay either in cash, livestock, or 

merchandise, or by trading one-half of the headright 

to a capitalist who would pay the fees for 

him. The settler had to live on the property, 

develop it, and could not sell it to a non-resident 

because Mexico forbade absentee ownership. 

Austin’s empresario reward was 23,000 acres to 

be located anywhere in his colony for every 100 

families he settled. His first contract was for 300 

families which was completed in 1827 and he 

received four more similar six-year contracts, all 

of which would expire by 1834. Not all of his 

contracts were completed, but he settled almost 

1,000 families altogether. 

The Anglo American settlers were pleased with 

the 1824 Mexican Constitution because it seemed 

familiar. It had three branches of government with 

an upper and lower legislative body at both the 

state and national level similar to that in the United 

States. The president was elected for a four-year 

term, and there was a provision for a judicial 

branch. However, there were few personal guarantees 

like those in the U. S. Bill of Rights. While the 

Roman Catholic Church was the only religion permitted 

officially, the lack of an English-speaking 

priest willing to live in the remote colony before 

1831 allowed Protestant Texans a degree of freedom. 

It was differences in the judicial procedures—the 

lack of trial by jury, the power of military 

commanders to arrest and try civilians, and 

the remote distances for legal redress of grievances 

that would cause trouble in the 1830s. Another 

cause of uneasiness was the lack of stability in 

national politics after 1828 when a coup d’etat 

overthrew the elected officials and subsequent military 

leaders were elevated to the presidency. 

Austin remained a bachelor but his younger 

brother, James E. Brown Austin, joined him; 

Brown married in 1828 and had a son. In 1831 

Austin’s sister, Emily Austin Bryan Perry (Mrs. 

James F. Perry) whose first husband, James 

Bryan, died in Missouri, arrived with her Bryan 

and Perry children. Several of these offspring 

established families and lived in Brazoria 

County. The Perrys developed Peach Point 

Plantation near Brazoria where Stephen F. 

Austin lived when he was in Texas. As empresario, 

Austin often accepted burdensome duties 

and one took him to Mexico City in 1833. 

Political turmoil at that time caused his arrest 

and incarceration for several months in the 

national capital. It was two years before he 

returned home in September 1835—just in time 

for the beginning of the Texas Revolution. 

“Brown” Austin and distant kinsman, John 

Austin, built a cotton gin and store on the high 

west bank of the Brazos in 1826 on land belonging 

to Stephen. The site was the head of tidewater 

and therefore navigable year around and 

seemed a good townsite. The pair platted 

Brazoria in 1828 and also bought the schooner 

Eclipse to take cotton, lumber, and hides to 

Tampico and Matamoros. Trade between 

Mexican Texas and the United States still await- 

❖ 

Emily Austin Bryan Perry (1795- 

1851) sister of Stephen F. Austin 

and wife of James Bryan (?-1822) 

and later James F. Perry (1790- 

1853). The Perrys moved from 

Missouri to Texas in 1831 and built 

Peach Point Plantation near the 

mouth of the Brazos just above 

Freeport. She had eleven children, six 

of who lived to adulthood, including 

W. Joel Bryan, Moses Austin Bryan, 

and Guy M. Bryan. 


❖ 

An 1835 map showing the division of 

Mexican Departments in Texas. 

ed a formal commercial treaty although Austin 

colonists had the temporary privilege of importing 

goods from New Orleans for their own use 

during the pioneer period. James’ death from 

yellow fever while on business in New Orleans 

in 1829 left John Austin with the responsibility 

of their enterprise. 

By 1831 the village had thirty buildings: three 

of brick, several of sawed lumber, and the rest 

log houses. John served as alcalde (mayor) of 

Brazoria in 1832 and also participated in the 

attack against Fort Velasco at the mouth of the 

river. He and his children died during the 

cholera epidemic that devastated the lower 

Brazos in 1833. His widow married again and in 

1836 sold a portion of John’s headright on 

Buffalo Bayou to A. C. and J. K. Allen, who laid 

off the new city of Houston. 

Brazoria even had a newspaper in 1832, the 

Texas Gazette and Brazoria Commercial Advertiser. 

It soon became the Constitutional Advocate, and 

several years later, the Texas Republican. The old 

press moved to Velasco after the Texas Revolution 

but was lost during the 1837 hurricane. 


Other villages developed along the lower 

Brazos. Josiah Bell built a landing on his property 

below the mouth of Varner’s Creek. This little 

community was known as Marion, and by 1831, 

Bell had a white frame house, a store, and two or 

three smaller cabins. The flood of 1833 inundated 

the village and Bell built a new residence two 

miles inland on the edge of the prairie. Here he 

platted the town of Columbia (present West 

Columbia) with a broad road leading to the landing. 

The flood also damaged Brazoria, which in 

1833 briefly was called “Victoria” for Mexico’s 

first president. After the flood, the district’s ayuntamiento 

(municipal council) relocated the seat of 

local government at Columbia, where it remained 

through 1836. After 1834 the town also served as 

the seat for the Department of the Brazos, having 

jurisdiction over all the valley. Henry Smith, a 

resident since 1827, was the only Anglo 

American in Mexican Texas to serve as Jefe 

(Chief) of a Department. Bell built a large hotel to 

serve the lawyers and clients who attended the 

monthly court at Columbia. Cotton merchant 

Walter C. White erected a large warehouse on the 

river at Marion (present East Columbia), and a 

few homes were built nearby. 

Close to the mouth of the Brazos River, two 

new towns developed. On the west bank was the 

commission house of Thomas F. McKinney and 

Samuel May Williams. They platted the town of 

Quintana on land they secured from Austin. 

Besides their warehouse and store near the wharf, 

the pair owned a boatway, a cotton gin, and their 

homes and began selling lots to others. On the 

east side of the river above the remains of Fort 

Velasco built by the government in 1831, developers 

began the town of Velasco. By 1835 there 

was a large hotel to serve visitors and scattered 

other buildings. 

In 1830 the Mexican government grew suspicious 

about the number of Anglo-Americans living 

in Texas and the inability to assimilate them. 

The Anglos’ reluctance to speak Spanish and continued 

practice of American-style law in the 

alcalde courts worried officials in Mexico City. 

These concerns became more acute when 

❖ 

Josiah Bell’s plat for Columbia. 


❖ 

Right: Mary Austin Holley, cousin 

of Stephen F. Austin, created a series 

of drawings of early Brazoria County 

life to pass the time during her visits 

to the colony between 1833 and 1838. 

COURTESY OF THE CENTER 

FOR AMERICAN HISTORY. 

Below: An illustration by Mary Austin 

Holley. “Velasco, 1835.” A sketch of 

Velasco, perhaps drawn May 5 from 

the deck of the schooner San Felipe 

which brought Mrs. Holley from New 

Orleans. She and another woman 

declined going ashore in the lighter 

and waited for favorable wind and 

tide so the vessel could cross the large 

sand bar at the mouth 

COURTESY MARY AUSTIN HOLLEY PAPERS, 

THE CENTER FOR AMERICAN HISTORY, 

THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN. 

President Andrew Jackson sent a new minister to 

Mexico City with instructions to acquire eastern 

Texas by treaty or purchase. 

Feeling that its national security was threatened, 

the Mexican Congress banned further 

immigration into Texas by residents of the United 

States. Understandable from the perspective of 

Mexico, the law upset Anglo Texans. However, an 

ambiguous phrase in the wording of the law 

relaxed the ban on immigration into Austin’s and 

Green DeWitt’s colony at Gonzales after Austin’s 

influential Mexican friends interceded with the 

federal government. Elsewhere, the ban remained 

in place but was difficult to enforce. 

That same year, the temporary special tariff 

exemption enjoyed by Austin’s pioneers expired. 

Many mistakenly believed the privilege of free 

importation of goods from the United States was 

perpetual and resisted the customs collectors and 

garrisons sent to enforce tariff and tonnage laws. 

The battles at Anahuac and Velasco in June 1832 

fortunately coincided with the end of a civil war 

between Mexico’s two political parties. The 

reform Federalist faction led by General Antonio 

López de Santa Anna triumphed over the troops 

of the Centralist administration. This victory 

allowed the Anglo Texans to claim they were 

attacking the Centralist troops at Anahuac and 

Velasco as supporters of the santanista movement, 

not as rebels against Mexico. 

Federalist leaders accepted this somewhat 

disingenuous explanation. The Texans drew up 

petitions for reforms they wanted, and in April 

1833, when Federalist reformer Santa Anna was 

installed as president, Austin set off for Mexico 

City to present their requests. Delay followed 

delay, and an injudicious letter Austin sent to San 

Antonio caused his arrest for sedition. He 

remained a political prisoner in the capital for 

more than eighteen months. 

In the meantime Santa Anna changed sides 

and, by 1834, assumed dictatorial powers, dismissing 

Congress and several state legislatures. In 

early 1835, he personally led the army north to 

Zacatecas, a Federalist stronghold and the neighbor 

of Coahuila y Tejas (the two were joined as a 

state in 1824 because neither had sufficient population), 

where he allowed the troops to murder 

and pillage. Coahuila y Tejas Federalists feared 

Santa Anna would march against them, but he 

returned to Mexico City. Federalist refugees in 

New Orleans plotted ways to remove Santa Anna 

from office, but their invasion force was defeated 

in November 1835. 

Austin returned home in September 1835 

convinced that war against Santa Anna’s administration 

was the only choice for Texans. Within 


❖ 

Left: An illustration by Mary Austin 

Holley. “Entrance to the Brazos—with 

the bar—a very bad bar. Schooner 

American aground—Schooner 

Elizabeth wrecked on Velasco Point.” 

Inside the harbor at Velasco looking 

out at the Gulf and the notorious sand 

bar where the schooner Mary 

Elizabeth (there was no schooner 

called American) that followed the 

San Felipe had run aground. 

Bottom: An illustration by Mary 

Austin Holley. “McKinney’s 

Warehouse, or Quintana, 1835. 

Opposite Velasco. Morning.” The San 

Felipe paused at the new McKinney 

& Williams warehouse and boatyard 

on the west bank of Quintana. 

Stephen F. Austin gave Thomas F. 

McKinney and Samuel May Williams 

the land for their new town and 

business complex. Henry Austin, 

Mary’s brother, met her at Brazoria 

on May 10 and took her to his home 

farther up the Brazos. 





❖ 

Right: An illustration by Mary Austin 

Holley. The home of Dr. A. E. Phelps. 

Orozimbo, the house of Dr. James E. 

Phelps, above the Columbia and 

opposite the home of Henry Austin. 

Bottom: An illustration by Mary 

Austin Holley. “Plantation of Mr. 

Sayre on the Brazos, 40 miles from 

the sea. 1/2 league. The house, 56 by 

40, cost from $800 to $1,000. Cotton 

gin $1,000. 100 bales cotton this year. 

1200 bushels corn and potatoes....” 

Willow Glen, home of New Yorker 

Charles D. Sayre, was about a mile 

from Columbia when Mrs. Holley reboarded 

the San Felipe on June 10. 

Mrs. Sayre joined her going to New 

Orleans. 




weeks, Brazoria County men joined other volunteers 

at Gonzales to defend the townspeople’s 

cannon loaned to them for defense against 

Indians. The commander at San Antonio sent 

cavalry to recover the field piece as part of Santa 

Anna’s orders to disarm civilians. The ensuing 

Battle of Gonzales on October 2, 1835 signaled 

the beginning of the war against Santa Anna. The 

Texans forced the administration’s cavalry to 

retreat without the cannon. 

Austin led the volunteers to San Antonio to lay 

siege to the Centralist forces within the town 

while other Anglo Texans met at San Felipe in 

November to “consult” whether or not to declare 

Texas independent from Mexico. Dr. Branch T. 

Archer from the Brazoria neighborhood presided 

from November 3-14, 1835. Although he favored 

independence, Archer voted with the majority to 

remain part of Mexico under the 1824 constitution, 

but as a separate state from Coahuila. This 

action meant the Texans opposed Santa Anna’s 

Centralism like the other Mexican Federalists. 

Archer came to Texas in 1831 from Virginia 

and had participated in the recent battle at 

Gonzales. The delegates at the “Consultation” 

named Archer, Austin, and fellow Brazos resident 

William H. Wharton, to go immediately to the 

United States to solicit money, arms, and volunteers 

to resist Santa Anna. Henry Smith, the Jefe 

of the Department, was named governor of the 

newly-separated State of Texas while Sam 

Houston of Nacogdoches, was made major general 

of Texan forces. While the delegates were still 

in session, troops at San Antonio surrendered to 

the Texan volunteers. Leaving their arms, they 

retreated to the Rio Grande. Lacking supplies and 

winter clothing, the Texans went home. 


❖ 

Left: An illustration by Mary Austin 

Holley. “The House of James F. Perry, 

Peach Point, Texas. Taken March 7, 

1838, by M. A. Holley.” In December 

1837, Mrs. Holley returned to Texas 

in the steamboat Columbia that 

anchored at Galveston where she took 

the small steamer Comanche to 

Houston on Buffalo Bayou. After a 

brief visit in the new capital of the 

Republic of Texas, she joined others in 

a barouche for the Brazos settlements. 

In March 1838, she made this sketch 

of Peach Point Plantation, the home of 

Emily Austin Bryan Perry and her 

husband James F. Perry. 

By February, however, popular opinion in 

Texas shifted to independence from Mexico. The 

communities chose delegates to a convention to 

meet at Washington-on-the-Brazos on March 1 to 

decide the issue. Four Brazoria men, Asa 

Brigham, J. S. D. Byrom, James Collinsworth, and 

Edwin Waller, attended the convention and 

signed the Texas Declaration of Independence on 

March 2, 1836. Three Hispanic delegates (two 

from San Antonio and one from Harrisburg) also 

signed, and even more tejanos would serve at the 

Battle of San Jacinto under Juan N. Seguin of San 

Antonio. During the next two weeks the delegates 

wrote a constitution for the new Republic of 

Texas and chose temporary officers until an election 

could be held. 

Bottom, left: An illustration by Mary 

Austin Holley. Bolivar House, home of 

Henry Austin. While visiting her 

brother’s family Mary drew this sketch 

of “Bolivar,” Henry Austin’s home on 

the east side of the Brazos. Henry 

may have served with the Colombian 

Navy during the wars for 

independence and admired the 

liberator of Colombia, Simon Bólivar. 

Bottom, right: An illustration by Mary 

Austin Holley. “Eagle Island, 1837.” 

On February 25 and 26, Mrs. Holley 

visited Eagle Island, the plantation of 

William H. Wharton and Sarah 

Groce Wharton, which was among the 

best furnished homes along the lower 

Brazos. The land was a gift from 

Sarah’s father, Jared E. Groce, and the 

Whartons collected books, furniture, 

and objets d’art, including a Spanish 

stirrup reputed to be that of Cortez. 

The Whartons also had an elaborate 

garden and orchard. 





❖ 

Santa Anna (1794-1876) in civilian 

clothes. A Mississippi river boat 

passenger in December 1836 said he 

looked like a merchant when the 

former president was on his way to 

see President Andrew Jackson. 

COURTESY CENTER FOR AMERICAN HISTORY, 

UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN. 

Santa Anna’s thirteen-day siege and victory at 

the Alamo on March 6, 1836 is a familiar story. 

No Brazoria residents served there nor were any 

with James Walker Fannin at Goliad later that 

month. Fannin had an interest in a plantation 

along the San Bernard River since 1834, but his 

family did not come to Texas until February 

1836. His force, like that at the Alamo, was made 

up almost entirely of newcomers from the United 

States. The reason for the mass execution of prisoners 

at the Alamo and Goliad was not an indication 

of military cruelty. The Mexican congress 

in December 1835 decreed that armed foreigners 

on Mexican soil would be executed as pirates. 

This edict followed the Federalist refugees’ invasion 

at Tampico in November where many of the 

participants were natives of the United States. 

Ironically, the odious measure was rescinded in 

response to international criticism only weeks 

before the Goliad massacre. 

Texas residents began fleeing eastward in mid- 

March when they learned that the Alamo had fallen. 

Some Brazoria County residents headed for 

Galveston Island where boats in the harbor might 

evacuate them. Thomas F. McKinney, his wife, 

and the families of William H. Jack, James Walker 

Fannin, and Samuel May Williams (the men were 

all absent) boarded his steamboat Laura and 

sailed to the mouth of the Neches River, where 

McKinney had a warehouse. 

Santa Anna’s troops began crossing the Brazos 

River at Fort Bend on April 14. General Jose 

Urrea, leading troops along the coast, reached the 

San Bernard River on the 19th and found empty 

houses. On April 21, the same day that Santa 

Anna was defeated at San Jacinto, Urrea entered 

Columbia. The next day he occupied Brazoria and 

started towards Velasco. But he received orders 

from General Vicente Filisola, Santa Anna’s second-in-command, 

to retreat to Fort Bend because 

Santa Anna had been captured. 

By April 24, the various commands of the 

Mexican army gathered at the vacant home of 

Widow Elizabeth Powell near the San Bernard 

River and reluctantly began the retreat ordered by 

the captive Santa Anna. 

Nine days after the battle, the Texans 

moved Santa Anna and his aides from the battleground 

upstream to the farm of George M. 

Patrick where they remained until May 6. The 

steamboat Yellowstone took them to Galveston 

harbor where they spent two days on board the 

anchored schooner Independence where negotiations 

continued. On May 10 the steamboat Laura 

carried them to Velasco where the Mexican officers 

lodged in a small building. 

There Santa Anna signed two treaties on May 

13. One ordered Filisola, camped just north of the 

Rio Grande, to retreat to Matamoros and to 

exchange his Texan prisoners for a like number of 

Mexican prisoners to be sent south. 

A second secret agreement arranged for Santa 

Anna, accompanied by two Texan diplomats, to 

return to Mexico to work for the recognition of 

Texas as an independent nation. Nobody really 

expected the Mexican government to acknowledge 

promises made by a prisoner of war, but it 

seemed the solution to the problem of Santa 


Anna. If he died in Texas, it would mar the reputation 

of the infant Texas Republic. 

A rowdy mob prevented Santa Anna’s departure 

from Velasco on June 2 on board the Texas 

armed schooner Invincible. Two weeks later he 

and his aides boarded the Laura for Brazoria, 

Columbia, and finally a small house on the 

Varner-Patton league. 

They remained there from June 16 to July 30 

guarded by Captain William H. Patton. Mexican 

merchants in New Orleans supplied the Santa 

Anna party with food and clothing and 

they received a number of visitors, including 

many Texans. 

On July 30, the three aides and Santa Anna 

mounted horses and rode north to Orozimbo, the 

home of Dr. James A. E. Phelps, where they 

remained until November. 

Texas voters chose Sam Houston as president 

of the new republic in September and he 

assumed office on October 22, 1836. Many senators 

had been elected on promises to hang Santa 

❖ 

Top, bottom: The old Patton 

Plantation north of East Columbia. 

The Patton family bought the land and 

the log cabin from original settler, 

Martin Varner in 1834, and soon built 

the large brick house with its 

verandahs. The Pattons grew cotton 

and sugar and in June 1836 Santa 

Anna and his aides occupied a small 

building before moving to Orozimbo. 

Captain William H. Patton was 

in charge of the Mexican president 

and accompanied him to 

Washington, D. C. in November 1836. 


❖ 

Orozimbo in the 1870s. Dr. James A. 

E. Phelps acquired his headright about 

twelve miles above Columbia in 

1824 and in 1835. Mary Austin 

Holley sketched Orozimbo, then only 

one story. The similar front gables 

suggest that perhaps the first house 

was raised. 

Santa Anna and his aides were 

guarded in a separate building at 

Orozimbo from July through 

November 1836. Dr. Phelps 

treated the captive when he was ill, 

and in gratitude when he was 

again president, Santa Anna 

released Phelps’s son, who had 

been captured during the Texan 

raid on Mierin in 1842. 

Anna, but Houston vetoed efforts to punish the 

Mexican general. 

On November, 20 President Houston wrote a 

safe-conduct pass for Santa Anna and Colonel 

Juan Almonte, who traveled as free men to see 

President Andrew Jackson in Washington, D. C. 

He named three Texan officers, Captain Patton, 

Colonel George W. Hockley and Colonel Bernard 

E. Bee, all with business in the United States, to 

accompany the two Mexican officers eastward. 

The five left Orozimbo on horseback on 

November 26, and traveled east across Louisiana 

to Plaquemine where they boarded a steamer that 

took them up the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers. 

The final journey was by stagecoach to the capital, 

where President Jackson met with Santa Anna 

and sent him home on a U. S. naval vessel. By the 

time Santa Anna reached Veracruz in February 

1837, he was no longer in power. 

In May 1836, Brazoria County refugees 

returned home to plant crops and make repairs to 

homes and businesses looted by Mexicans and 

vagrants. Columbia, the least damaged town 

along the lower Brazos, served as the temporary 

capital of the new Republic from October 3 to 

December 22,1836. The Congress accepted the 

offer of Augustus C. and John Kirby Allen to 

move the seat of government to their newly platted 

village of Houston on Buffalo Bayou. 

For additional reading about Brazoria County: 

Eugene C. Barker, The Life of Stephen F. Austin: 

Founder of Texas, 1793-1836. Cokesbury Press, 1926. 

Carlos E. Castañeda, trans., The Mexican Side of the 

Texas Revolution. Washington, D.C.: Documentary 

Publications, 1971. 

James A. Creighton, A Narrative History of Brazoria 

County. Waco: Texian Press, 1975. 

Margaret Swett Henson, Samuel May Williams: Early 

Texas Entrepreneur. College Station: Texas 

A & M University Press, 1976. 

For Santa Anna and Urrea in Brazoria County: 

Margaret Swett Henson, “Politics and the Treatment 

of the Mexican Prisoners after the Battle of San 

Jacinto,” Southwestern Historical Quarterly, XCIII, 

October 1990. pp. 189-230. 

D. Gabriel Nuñez Ortega, “Diario de un prisonero 

de la guerra de Texas.” Bóletin del Archivo General de la 

Nación, IV, November 1933. pp. 833-881. 

Ron C. Tyler, et al., eds., New Handbook of Texas, 6 

vols. Austin: Texas State Historical Association, 1996 

for persons, places, events. 


ECONOMIC RECOVERY AND 

THE PLANTATION ERA 

T HE R EPUBLIC, STATEHOOD, AND C IVIL W AR 

1836-1865 

The first congress of the Republic of Texas created Brazoria County on December 20, 1836 and 

until 1838, it included the mainland of present-day Galveston County. The infant Republic struggled 

with economic hard times following the banking panic of 1837 in the United States. President 

Andrew Jackson’s anti-banking policies, widespread speculation in land and commodities, and a 

specie shortage caused the downward spiral. The situation continued until the war with Mexico in 

1846 stimulated growth. Brazoria County residents survived with the exchange of personal IOUs, the 

unreliable promissory notes issued by the Republic of Texas, and paper money circulated by merchants 

Robert Mills at Brazoria and McKinney and Williams at Quintana. McKinney and Williams 

notes were widely accepted even after the firm moved to the new town of Galveston in 1838. 

A hurricane swept the Texas coast in October 1837 and damaged ships and buildings at the mouth 

of the Brazos River. Brazoria County’s plantation economy recovered and the 1840 tax rolls reveal 

almost 1,600 African American laborers who planted, cultivated and harvested cotton and experimental 

sugar crops. Brazoria County’s African American population was second only to that of 

Harrison County in East Texas. In 1844, the county seat at Brazoria had a “handsome” wooden court 

house, several large stores, and a number of private dwellings. A visitor estimated that 800 people 

lived in the area. Velasco and Columbia were second and third in size. 

The annexation of Texas to the United States in December 1845 was welcomed by county residents. 

The act, however, led directly to a war with Mexico that lasted from May 1846 until February 

❖ 

First Capitol of the Republic of Texas 

in West Columbia. The Republic of 

Texas chose J.H. Bell’s town of 

Columbia two miles west of the river 

for the site of the First Congress in 

October-December, 1836. It was the 

only town in the area with sufficient 

buildings. The House of 

Representatives met in this former 

residence and store. The next session 

of Congress was held in the new town 

of Houston. 

Economic Recovery and the Plantation Era ✦ 19

❖ 

Sugar mill at Chenango Plantation. In 

1947, Sam Simon and Jobe and 

Hiram Clemons ring the old bell. 

Most of the old buildings at Chenango 

were destroyed in the 1900 hurricane. 

1848. Mexico never recognized the independence 

of its frontier state and broke diplomatic 

relations with the United States immediately following 

annexation. The Treaty of Guadalupe- 

Hidalgo ceded more territory to the United 

States than that gained in the Louisiana 

Purchase and stretched national boundaries 

west to the Pacific Ocean. Moreover, the wartime 

boom stimulated the national economy 

after the ten-year economic slump. 

With annexation and peace, immigration into 

Texas increased and Brazoria County entered 

its “golden” decade for cotton and sugar 

planters. An advertisement in the Brazoria 

County Planter extolled its advantages, and was 

copied by the Austin Texas State Gazette on 

September 11, 1852: 

TO THE PLANTERS IN THE OLD STATES. 

This is the year for you to come to Texas and 

start a new plantation. 

COME TO BRAZORIA COUNTY... 

Flattering statistics followed. While Brazoria 

Countians had experimented with sugar as early 

as 1828, they continually searched for varieties 

resistant to pests and rot and better processing 

methods. By the mid-1840s, the number of 

sugar mills increased in Brazoria County and, by 

1852, it led its neighbors almost two to one in 

hogsheads of sugar produced. That, however, 

was the peak year. After 1852 a series of adverse 

weather conditions destroyed crops, and the 

cost of maintaining deteriorating machinery 

became prohibitive. Sugar production continued 

to decline until a resurgence in the 1880s. 

Statistics from the 1850 and 1860 United 

States censuses reveal the development of 

Brazoria County during that decade. In 1850 

there were 1,329 whites and 3,512 blacks. Ten 

years later, whites had increased by only 720 to 

2,049, while the slave population grew by 1,608 

to a total of 5,150. In each census year there 

were more than twice the number of African 

Americans to the white population. Fifty-one 

percent of households in 1850 owned slaves, 

and in 1860, fifty-six percent had bondsmen. 

The value of slaves more than doubled in the 

decade from a total of $1,159,678 (average value 

$320) to $2,945,550 (average value over 

$1,400). Moreover, the number of planters in 

Brazoria County with over 100 slaves also doubled 

from four in 1850 to nine in 1860. The 

value of real property increased from $1,911,800 

in 1850 to $6,285,457 ten years later. In 1860 

Brazoria ranked fourth in the number of slaves 

among the 105 counties in Texas. 

The wealth accumulated during the good 

cotton and sugar years stimulated some Brazoria 

planters to build increasingly elaborate homes. 

Reminiscing in the 1870s, Abner Strobel, stepgrandson 

of planter Abner Jackson, described 

the old plantations. Of the forty-six in existence 

in the 1850s, nineteen raised only sugar, sixteen 

exclusively cotton, and the rest presumably cultivated 

both. 

The three largest plantations were the 

Jackson place at Lake Jackson, Morgan L. Smith 

and John Adriance’s Waldeck Plantation, and 

John Greenville McNeel’s Ellersly. During the 

boom times, Jackson covered all of his buildings 

with brick and stuccoed the exterior walls with 

cement. His twelve-room mansion with its pillars 

and porches faced an artificial lake on the 


east side of the Brazos River and was surrounded 

by orchards and gardens. Waldeck, named 

either for an English prince or a visiting German 

nobleman, was near Columbia and reputedly 

made the finest sugar in Texas. Its buildings 

were brick, and imported statuary decorated the 

park-like grounds. Some considered the twostory-brick, 

twenty-one-room Ellersly south of 

Brazoria the finest in Texas. None of the three 

survived into the twentieth century. 

Brazoria County planters, dependent on 

exporting their products by shallow-draft boats 

to the deep water port of Galveston, complained 

about the high cargo insurance due to the accidents 

on the sandbars at the mouth of the river. 

They embraced the 1850s plan to dredge a canal 

from the mouth of the river through the marshes 

and bays to Galveston Island proposed by 

Robert Mills, Brazoria planter and banker, and 

Galveston cottonbrokers, Robert and Joseph 

Hensley. This fifty-foot-wide canal allowed shallow-draft 

steamers easier access to the island 

city although reports of bank cave-ins suggest a 

need for constant repairs. It would be the end of 

the century before federal money provided a 

permanent solution with the construction of the 

jetties and the Intracoastal Canal. 

In the mid-1850s, Brazoria County investors 

developed a plan to connect with Texas’ first 

railroad, the Buffalo Bayou, Brazos and 

Colorado Railway headquartered at Harrisburg 

on Buffalo Bayou east of Houston. Its tracks 

stretched westward to Stafford’s Point in Fort 

Bend County in 1853 and reached the Colorado 

River by 1860. The BBB&C altered traditional 

shipping patterns by funneling Fort Bend cotton 

and sugar shipments away from the Brazos 

River. Brazoria County planters and merchants 

wanted a similar connection through Houston 

and its bayou to connect with Galveston 

wharves. The Brazoria County capitalists joined 

Houston merchants to charter the Houston Tap 

and Brazoria Railway in 1856 to connect with 

the BBB&C. The first six miles were completed 

that same year, and, by 1860, the rails reached 

the Brazos River east of Columbia. Known as the 

“Sugar Road” and later the “Columbia Tap,” this 

connection lessened Brazoria’s dependence on 

water traffic before the Civil War. 

National politics in the mid-1850s raised 

concern among slaveholders in Brazoria County. 

Efforts to prevent the expansion of slavery into 

new territories in the old Louisiana Purchase 

and the Mexican Cession seemed a threat. 

Senator Sam Houston became unpopular with 

many Texans because of his support of these 

restrictions. Nevertheless he rallied a majority of 

votes to become governor of Texas in 1859. 

In the 1860 presidential election, Republican 

Abraham Lincoln of Illinois ran on a moderate 

platform forbidding slavery in the territories, 

but not abolition. Southerners, however, feared 

❖ 

The remains of the 1854 yellow longleaf-pine 

Levi Jordan plantation house 

west of the San Bernard River along 

FM 521. The simple, one-room deep 

house was built for cross-ventilation to 

catch Gulf breezes throughout the 

rooms flanking the main entrance. It 

originally had a front gallery. This 

sugar plantation remained in the 

possession of descendants until the 

1970s and is one of only two 

(the other is Varner-Hogg) with 

evidence of the plantation era. 


❖ 

The Ammon Underwood house 

museum, began in 1835 as a log 

structure at Columbia. In 1838, 

Underwood and his future mother-inlaw 

bought and improved it for a 

boarding house. He married Rachel J. 

Carson the following year and raised 

a family in the house. It was moved 

three times before the 1940s when it 

was placed on its present site. 

this foretold the eventual abolition of slavery. 

When Lincoln won in November, Texans and 

other southerners urged secession. Houston, 

devoted to the Union, finally bowed to popular 

opinion and reluctantly called a special session 

of the legislature. As soon as the legislators met, 

members ordered a convention to consider leaving 

the Union. Elections for delegates, supervised 

by county judges, were viva voce, not a 

secret paper ballot. Each man announced his 

vote amid a gathering of friends and enemies. 

Unionists were pressured to stay home. The 

elected delegates, 70% slaveholders, met on 

January 28 in Austin and after some argument 

agreed to submit their decision to Texas voters. 

On February 2, 1861, the convention voted 

166-8 in favor of secession. 

Twenty-one days later on February 23, 1861, 

46,129 Texas men voted to secede while 14,697 

opposed. In Brazoria County with its plantation 

economy, the majority was strong for secession. 

The official vote was 527 for and only 2 against, 

the two being the respected unionist James H. 

Bell, a Texas Supreme Court justice, and his 

brother. A close examination of the 1860 census 

shows there were at least 615 eligible voters in 

Brazoria including a number of recent German, 

Swiss, and other European immigrants who had 

sought refuge in the United States and probably 

were not secession-minded. There were also a 

few men from New York, Pennsylvania, and 

other northern states who might not favor leaving 

the Union. Because voting was viva voce, one 

suspects many men did not vote, and those that 

did were perhaps influenced by ardent secessionists 

in the crowd. 

The Texas Committee for Public Safety immediately 

seized United States military property at 

San Antonio and elsewhere which provided armament 

to defend the Gulf coast. Velasco received 

one cannon at this time. The newly created 

Confederate States of America called for volunteers, 

and in Brazoria County, young men with 

horses enthusiastically enrolled in a cavalry company 

under the leadership of Captain John A. 

Wharton. This unit represented one-half of 

Company B of Terry’s Texas Rangers when they 

assembled in Houston in September 1861. 

Colonel Benjamin Franklin Terry was from Fort 

Bend County, but as a youth lived at Point 


Pleasant (later called Chenango) in Brazoria 

County with his mother and his uncle, Ben Fort 

Smith. He led the 1,100 Rangers, officially the 

Eighth Texas Cavalry, eastward on trains, boats, 

and by land to battles in Kentucky and Tennessee. 

Less glamorous but equally necessary were 

units of state infantry, artillery, and the home 

guard. A federal ship appeared off Galveston in 

1861 and captured several local schooners for 

use in blockading the coast. Colonel Joseph 

Bates, a local planter, commanded the Fourth 

Texas Volunteer Regiment headquartered at 

Velasco. Its members defended the coast with 

batteries near the mouth of the river and prevented 

federal landings at Velasco in 1862 and 

also at San Luis Pass at the west end of Galveston 

Island. A Union landing party, however, 

destroyed the vital salt works at Cedar Lake near 

the mouth of the San Bernard River in southwestern 

Brazoria County. 

Yankee vessels occupied the Galveston harbor 

in late 1862 but were destroyed or forced to 

withdraw following the New Year’s Eve attack by 

Texas troops and cotton-clad steamers from 

Houston. This Confederate victory aided the 

Texas blockade runners for awhile. Small coasting 

vessels sailed to Matamoros to exchange cotton 

for medicine, staples, and other items needed 

by civilians and local military units. Union 

gunboats also had occupied the Matagorda 

peninsula in November 1862 and continued to 

threaten Brazoria County. 

The threat of a Union invasion caused the 

removal of Brazoria County’s only war industry 

from East Columbia. James Henry Dance and 

his three brothers, George, Daniel, and Isaac, 

listed as millwrights in the 1860 census, began 

making pistols for the Confederacy in July 

1862. Natives of North Carolina, James Henry 

and two others worked as carpenters for John 

Sweeney in 1850 according to the Brazoria 

County census. Within three years the parents 

and other family members moved from Alabama 

to East Columbia. The brothers bought lots on 

Front Street for their machine shop and home 

while the father bought a plantation. When the 

Civil war began, the brothers volunteered but 

were detailed to their shop to grind corn and 

mount cannon for the military. 

Blacksmith Anderson Park joined the firm by 

1863, but the fear of invasion and shortage of 

supplies caused the Dance family to sell their 

gunworks to the Confederate government. It 

was moved to Anderson, the seat of Grimes 

County, in December 1863. The shop, known as 

the Anderson Ordnance Works, produced 

Dance-style pistols through April 18, 1865— 

nine days after Lee surrendered to Grant at 

Appomattox. The Dance family continued to 

live and work in East Columbia after the war, 

where they made fine furniture. 

By late 1863, Confederate troops assigned to 

Brazoria County totaled 391 officers and 5,234 

men with 35 artillery pieces scattered from 

Caney, Cedar Lake, to Velasco. Home Guard 

units occupied the mouth of the San Bernard 

and Perry’s landing on the Brazos. Fortunately 

for Brazoria County, the Union forces withdrew 

in early 1864 in preparation for the Red River 

campaign in Louisiana. Confederate units in 

Texas were ordered eastward to prevent the presumed 

invasion of East Texas. Some men, however, 

deserted and joined renegades hiding on 

the northwestern frontier of Texas. 

Women, invalids, youngsters, and very old 

men managed the homefront as best they could 

with and without the help of slaves. Shortages of 

everything forced improvisation, and women 

returned to old-fashioned methods of spinning, 

weaving, and knitting to keep their families and 

their soldiers clothed. Women recalled pioneer 

practices to find coffee substitutes and home 

remedies. Nobody trusted Confederate paper 

❖ 

Typical ferry flat boat near Will 

Sweeney’s land on the San Bernard. 


❖ 

The Dance family’s loading dock and 

machine shop in East Columbia at the 

turn of the century. Carpenters and 

millwrights, the brothers produced 

pistols for the Confederacy from 1861 

to 1863. After the war, they also 

made furniture and coffins. 

money and everybody hoarded gold to buy 

necessities brought in by the blockade runners. 

Even paper was scarce. People wrote letters on 

scraps with handwriting in both directions and 

on both sides. 

For those families whose loved ones returned, 

the end of the war was bittersweet; for those 

bereaved there was double sorrow. The only 

good news was that prices returned to normal 

with the return of United States currency, but 

regaining lost economic position was long and 

hard. The federal troops arrived in Galveston in 

June 1865 and officially proclaimed the end of 

slavery in Texas on June 19. While Texas lands 

had not been ruined by wartime activity, the end 

of slavery changed the pre-war lifestyle for those 

dependent on slave labor. 

From the statistics of the 1860 and 1870 censuses, 

it is clear that emancipation in 1865 was 

an economic blow for the county and the former 

slaveholders. Families who had owned only a 

few black servants to help with household and 

farming chores could recover more easily than 

those dependent on a large labor force. Not only 

was there the monetary loss of their slaves, but 

without their usual income, they would not be 

able to pay free laborers for planting, cultivating, 

and harvesting crops grown on their large 

tracts. Moreover, there would be major adjustments 

for the newly freed men and women suddenly 

responsible for their own well-being. Rosy 

unrealistic dreams of forty acres and a mule 

proved a mirage, and both blacks and whites 

had to adjust to the changed social, political, 

and economic realities following the war. 

For additional reading: 

James A. Creighton, History of Brazoria County. 

Waco: Texian Press, 1975. 

James Marten, Texas Divided: Loyalty & Dissent in the 

Lone Star State, 1856-1874. University of Kentucky 

Press, 1990, discusses James H. Bell, Unionist of 

Brazoria County. 

Stanley Siegel, A Political History of the Texas Republic, 

1836-1845. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1956. 

Joe T. Timmons, “The Referendum in Texas on the 

Ordinance of Secession, February 23, 1861: The Vote,” 

East Texas Historical Journal, XI, #11. 1973. pp. 12-22. 

Gary Wiggins, Dance & Brothers: Texas Gunmakers 

of the Confederacy. Orange, VA: Moss Publications, 

1986. Reprint by Brazoria County Historical Museum, 

Angleton, Texas, 1997. 

The New Handbook of Texas has articles on secession 

and the confederacy based on recent scholarship. 

For information about deserters and objectors: 

James Marten, Texas Divided: Loyalty & Dissent in the 

Lone Star State, 1856-1874. University Press of 

Kentucky, 1990. 


ECONOMIC ADJUSTMENTS AND 

POLITICAL AND SOCIAL CHANGE 

1865-1890 

Returning Confederate veterans had to face unwelcome change. Some, expecting reprisal, fled to 

Mexico. A group from Brazoria, including planter and state representative, Mordello S. Munson, and 

Dr. R. N. Collins, also a planter, established the Tuxpan Land Company and bought acreage near 

Veracruz expecting to sell land to other veterans. Collins and others began sugar plantations. 

However, few of the expatriates remained long in Mexico after learning about the lenient amnesty 

offered to most Confederates. Munson did not move there permanently but maintained an interest in 

a schooner that served the company’s colony. 

President Abraham Lincoln, before his assassination in April 1865, set the tone for a quick healing 

of the nation. Although bitter in their defeat, former Confederates found that under presidential 

reconstruction most could regain their citizenship by taking an oath to future loyalty. Only high ranking 

military officers and political figures—like judges and legislators who had taken oaths to defend 

the U. S. Constitution—and those with wealth over $20,000 had to ask for an executive pardon. This 

step required an agent, someone with good political connections in Washington, D. C., to make the 

request and grease the political wheels during 1866. 

❖ 

East Columbia Front Street and 

docks, 1895. 

Economic Adjustments and Political and Social Change ✦ 25

White male Texans eligible to vote sent former 

Confederate leaders and some unionists to 

the state constitutional convention in January 

1866. There members reluctantly agreed to the 

requirements needed to readmit Texas to the 

Union except for ratifying the Thirteenth 

Amendment abolishing slavery. They said ratifying 

it was unnecessary because it was already 

adopted. Instead of accepting the inevitable as 

requested, they substituted a phrase in the new 

1866 Texas Constitution banning involuntary 

servitude except for lawbreakers. They did 

allow former slaves minimum privileges: property 

ownership, the ability to enter contracts, 

and to testify in court against other blacks, but 

not whites. Blacks, however, could not hold 

political office. This defiant attitude, plus the 

number of secessionists sent to Congress by 

Texas and other unrepentant southern states, 

prevented restoration to the Union and resulted 

in a more severe form of reconstruction. 

In March 1867, Congress declared current 

state governments provisional entities and 

divided the south into five military districts. 

Texas and Louisiana were under the command 

of General Philip Sheridan who would supervise 

the new Congressional reconstruction. 

Manhood suffrage would determine members of 

constitutional conventions and legislatures. The 

❖ 

Above: An unknown Brazoria County 

couple pose in their best clothes 

probably in the early 1900s. 

Right: First Brazoria County 

Courthouse from 1839-1895 at 

Brazoria. 


states had to adopt new constitutions and ratify 

the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments 

ending slavery and guaranteeing manhood suffrage. 

By June 1868 seven states were readmitted 

to the Union—but not Texas, Virginia, and 

Mississippi. They continued to resist but were 

finally restored in 1870 after complying with 

the requirements. They also had to approve 

the recently passed Fifteenth that prohibited 

states from denying male citizens the right to 

vote because of race, color, or previous condition 

of servitude. 

The Freedmen’s Bureau, created by the U. S. 

Congress in March 1865, established Texas 

headquarters in Galveston in September. The 

Bureau sent agents, often military men, to oversee 

the transition from slavery to freedom in 

Texas counties. Agents reviewed labor contracts, 

insisted on the rights of blacks in local courts, 

and organized schools for adults and children. If 

trouble surfaced, the agents could request military 

assistance. During July and September 

1867, Freedmen’s Bureau agents coached and 

encouraged blacks to register to vote. The success 

of this measure, of course, increased white 

resentment, and in some locales, white men 

adopted the methods of the Ku Klux Klan that 

had organized in Tennessee in 1866 to intimidate 

blacks. 

The required annual labor contracts between 

whites and black workers also caused trouble. 

The system was new to both sides and resulted 

in difficult adjustments to a free labor market 

with its implied mutual responsibilities. Black 

men could receive $10 per month and board 

while women domestic servants earned $4. 

Whites learned to use these contracts to their 

advantage, charging employees if things were 

broken or work not done. With the depressed 

economy, whites resorted to paying their workers 

in produce. This led to sharecropping and 

tenant farming for local poor families, both 

black and white. 

With the 1869 Texas Constitution approved 

and the state readmitted to the Union, Texas 

Republicans remained in control of the state 

government only until 1872, when the pre-war 

Democrats gained control of the legislature. 

Lacking sufficient population for its own 

Congressional district, Brazoria was joined to 

Galveston, where there was a large urban black 

population with political power. Thus George T. 

Ruby, a well-educated black Galvestonian, a 

native of New York and former resident of 

Maine, represented Brazoria and Galveston 

counties at the 1868 constitutional convention 

and in the Texas Senate from 1870-1873. 

In 1873, amid violence and fraud by both 

Republicans and Democrats, the “Redeemer” 

Democrats won the statewide general election 

and restored the old political order. At the local 

level, the old guard in Brazoria County retained 

control for the most part. Unlike some Texas 

counties, Brazoria County had only one black 

officeholder. Nathan Haller served as hide 

inspector in 1870 and twenty years later was 

elected to the state legislature, doubtless with 

the aid of the powerful black Republican 

machine in Galveston. 

❖ 

Nathan H. Haller, Brazoria County’s 

State Representative from 1893-1896, 

was born in Charleston, South 

Carolina in 1845 and came with his 

master to Walker County, Texas. He 

moved to Brazoria 

County by 1870 where he served as 

hide inspector, an officer who 

checked brands of slaughtered cattle. 

While in the legislature, he cosponsored 

a bill to create a “Negro 

Branch” of the University of Texas, 

but it was defeated. 


❖ 

Cabbages being taken by wagon to the 

shipping point at Velasco in the 1890s. 

African American residents of Brazoria 

County adapted to the parameters set for them. 

Blacks could and did establish their own 

schools, churches, and social groups, but the 

poverty imposed on them kept development to 

a minimum. Texas established a state school 

fund for public schools, but little money was 

provided by local white school boards for the 

education of black children. Many upper and 

middle class whites did not send their children 

to these segregated public schools until after 

World War I because the perception was that 

they were for the poor. 

Emancipation also changed the southern 

economy. No longer did the number of slaves 

indicate wealth; now it was the amount of land 

and sometimes livestock. Hereafter the use of the 

land and wise (or lucky) choice of crops to maximize 

profits determined wealth. The disordered 

cotton market in 1865 and 1866, for example, 

affected land valuation on county tax rolls. Betsy 

J. Powers’ social and economic study of Brazoria 

County from 1860 to 1920 concludes that families 

who owned the large plantations before the 

war continued to control the land afterward. 

This helps explain why poor whites and blacks 

seldom were able to own small tracts. 

Cotton remained the favorite crop through 

1870 even when the market was bad, while the 

second largest production was in foodstuffs for 

local consumption. Sugar had declined before 

the war and the continued lack of capital to 

repair machinery limited production and therefore 

profits. Some Brazoria County sugar growers 

shipped their unprocessed cane to Fort Bend 

County where a large mill operated at what 

became Sugarland. In 1871 sugar producers 

hoped to revive the county’s production by 

using convict labor. 

In 1867, bankrupt Texas began leasing convicts 

to work on railway construction as a way to 

support the prison system. At first the legislature 

allowed a few contractors to sublease any number 

of convicts to work anywhere at any kind of 

employment. The contractors fed, housed, and 

disciplined the prisoners with almost no state 

supervision, which led to neglect and cruelty. In 

the mid-1870s, the state resumed responsibility 

for the care and discipline of leased convicts 

assigned to specific jobs. By 1875, 130 convicts 

worked on three private Brazoria County sugar 

plantations, with the owners paying the state as 

much as $1.15 a day, which was higher than the 

local labor market. Planters, however, thought 


the cost worthwhile; there was no absenteeism 

or trouble because armed guards accompanied 

the convicts. By 1880, there were about twohundred 

and thirty black prisoners working on 

plantations in the county. 

An increase in the number of state prisoners 

in 1883 coincided with the sale of economically 

distressed sugar and cotton plantations. The 

state began acquiring its own prison farms, particularly 

in Brazoria and Fort Bend counties. 

The first purchase in Brazoria County was the 

5,527 acre Norton place in 1899, which was 

later increased to a total of 8,212 acres. This 

unit became the Clemens State Farm, named for 

W. C. Clemens, chairman of the Prison Board. It 

was once part of the McNeel family’s tracts west 

of the Brazos and south of Brazoria. 

This purchase proved so successful that it led 

to three more local prison farms over the next 

thirty years. In 1908 the state established the 

7,762 acre Ramsey Farm on the east side of the 

Brazos along Onion Creek. It included parts of 

the George Smith and Robert & David Mills 

plantations northwest of Angleton. 

The third and fourth purchases were made 

after the end of the convict leasing system in 

1914. The 6,747 acre Darrington sugar plantation 

was acquired in 1918; it is on the east side 

of the Brazos and along Oyster Creek close to 

the Fort Bend County line and was once owned 

by Sterling McNeel. The 7,428 acre Retrieve 

Plantation retained its name as a prison farm. It 

was the first plantation developed by Abner 

Jackson and his partner, which passed to various 

investors after 1842. Retrieve lies on both 

sides of Oyster creek just southwest of 

Angleton. The prison farm population in 

Brazoria County remained all black until 1910, 

when Hispanic and white prisoners made up 

about one-fifth of convict population. 

While cotton and sugar production were 

slow in recovering after the war, cattle raising 

remained productive in Brazoria County. Some 

planters turned their former cotton fields into 

pasture, even though marketing beef depended 

on selling the animals to trail drivers going 

north to the railheads in Kansas. By the mid- 

1870s, rails connected Texas cattlemen with 

northern and eastern markets. 

Another option was slaughtering the animals 

locally for their hides and tallow and giving the 

meat away. One venturesome local businessman 

began canning beef in the 1870s. The Brazos 

Beef Packing Company opened in West 

❖ 

1912 cattle drive through East 

Columbia to cross the new bridge. 

A rise on the Brazos River washed it 

away in 1913 but was soon rebuilt. 


❖ 

Right: Six miles north of Angleton, 

Bonney was a stop on the Columbia 

Tap Railway named for conductor, Joe 

Bonney. It had a post office in 1889 

and a store, cotton gin, and school to 

serve the farm community. Barefoot 

boys enjoy a ride on top of F. W. 

Meyer's hay wagon, c. 1917. 

Below: “Bonney School No. 1.” A 

school teacher and her students in 

their best clothes probably marking 

end of school recitation program. 

Columbia in 1876 but closed after three years, 

probably because shipping live animals became 

possible. 

Powers’ examination of the 1870 and 1880 

Brazoria County census returns show a number 

of white residents connected with cattle raising. 

However only two blacks said they were stock 

hands in 1870, and only ten were ranchhands in 

the 1880s, even though 70% of Brazoria 

County’s population was black. 

Texas’ traditional open range and free grazing 

changed after the invention of inexpensive wire 

fencing in the 1870s. In spite of opposition from 

cattle raisers, the Texas legislature passed a law 

protecting fenced-in farms. Eventually ranchers 

wanting to improve their herds with blooded 

stock also adopted fencing for breeding purposes. 

Brahma cattle, resistant to heat and insects, 

appeared in Brazoria County soon after the turn 

of the century. However, Brazoria County ranchers 

continued to resist ending the open range 

and it was 1938 before a county-wide stock law 

was passed by local voters 1,164 to 991. 

Between 1870 and the end of the century, 

Brazoria County’s African American population 

continued to outnumber whites. According the 

Powers study, by 1890 8,523 of Brazoria 

County’s 11,506 residents were African 

American. Population figures also indicate that 

the African American population grew faster 

than the white population from 1870 to 1890 

by a margin of more than two-to-one. 

Although white families in Brazoria County 

declined in wealth, Powers discovered their 

lifestyles remained almost the same between 


❖ 

Left: Trobough family on their front 

porch near Bonney. An above-ground 

cistern holds water drained from the 

roof gutters and the nearby windmill. 

The steep-pitched roof shows middlewestern 

influence. Common in 

northern climates to prevent snow 

accumulation, the roof covers the oneroom 

deep house with its minimal 

narrow windows. A summer in this 

house was hot! The 1900 storm blew 

the structure off its piers. 

Below: A three-masted schooner at 

Velasco, 1891. 

1865 and 1900. They still owned land and livestock 

and remained the political and economic 

leaders in the county. On the other hand, 

African Americans had won emancipation but 

very few owned land or livestock or had opportunities 

to improve their living conditions. 

Tenant farming and sharecropping were the 

only options for most. 

Powers’ examination of the white population 

after 1870 reveals many newcomers—both 

native-born non-southerners and foreign-born. 

In 1870 51% of Brazoria’s residents were southerners, 

but that number fell to 44% in 1880 

when people arrived from the midwestern and 

northeastern states seeking new opportunities 

in a milder climate. Moreover, almost one in 

four white heads of households in Brazoria 

County were foreign-born, particularly from 

Germany, a situation repeated in the 1880 census. 

Germans fled their homeland for political 

and economic reasons at this time, and some 

found refuge in Brazoria County. 

As early as 1871 county leaders formed an 

association to recruit immigrants. These economic 

developers included John Adriance, 

Stephen Perry, M.S. Munson, and Ammon 

Underwood. Adriance served as immigration 

agent for the International and Great Northern 


❖ 

Above: Steamboat Alice Blair docked 

at Front Street. It was one of three 

vessels transporting passengers and 

freight between the end of the 

Columbia Tap Railway on the east 

bank down river to Velasco before 

1892 when the rail connection was 

completed. 

Below: This shed-like structure was 

the first depot at Velasco in the 1890s. 

Railway for a few years. Nationwide, railroads 

actively advertised the pleasant climate and rich 

soil to increase population and shipments along 

their routes. Alvin, Pearland, and Iowa Colony, 

discussed later, are examples of Brazoria County 

communities developed in this manner. 

Thus by the end of the century, Brazoria 

County had a more diverse population than it 

previously enjoyed. Moreover, while still tied to 

traditional agrarian pursuits, Brazoria leadership 

actively worked to promote entrepreneurship 

and broaden its economic base. This interest in 

economic development continued after the turn 

of the century when the extraction of minerals 

would change the face of Brazoria County. 


Walter L. Buenger, Secession and the Union in Texas. 

Austin: University of Texas Press, 1984. 

Randolph B. Campbell, An Empire of Slavery: The 

Peculiar Institution in Texas, 1821-1865. Baton Rouge, 

Louisiana: State University Press, 1989. 

Nancy Cohen-Lack, “A Struggle for Sovereignty: 

National Consolidation, Emancipation, and Free Labor 

in Texas, 1865,” The Journal of Southern History, LVIII, 

February 1992. pp. 57-98 uses government documents 

to explain the problems between blacks and 

whites in various Texas counties including Brazoria. 

Carl H. Moneyhon, Republicanism in Reconstruction 

Texas. Austin: University of Texas, 1980. 

Betsy J. Powers, “From Cotton Fields to Oil Fields: 

Economic Development in a New South Community, 

1860-1920.” Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, 

University of Houston, 1994, copy in Brazoria County 

History Museum Library. 

William L. Richter, The Army in Texas During 

Reconstruction, 1865-1870. College Station: Texas A&M 

University Press, 1987. 

Donald R. Walker, Penology for Profit: 

A History of the Texas Prison System, 1867-1912. College 

Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1988. 


TECHNOLOGY AND NEWCOMERS 

CHANGE BRAZORIA COUNTY 

1890-1940 

The last decade of the nineteenth century brought major change to Brazoria County. Technological 

advances permitted improvements at the mouth of the river and more railroad connections, while 

newcomers brought by land developers resulted in different attitudes and a shift in power. These 

transformations even led to moving the seat of county government and building two new courthouses 

between 1895 and 1897. The first decades of the twentieth century introduced oil and sulphur 

industries and new ways to earn a living. 

Change began when private capital redeveloped the mouth of the river. The United States Army 

Corps of Engineers built jetties into the Gulf of Mexico to help the river scour itself. By the late 1880s 

the jetties needed constant repair because of subsidence, wave action, and sea worms, and neither 

national nor state funds were available. The Texas legislature, facing similar problems at other ports, 

allowed private corporations to construct and maintain deep water channels to link mainland harbors 

with the Gulf in exchange for the right to collect fees. 

The Brazos River Channel and Dock Company was organized, and, between 1889 and 1896, it built 

parallel jetties and wing-like dikes along the bank to control currents. The company established a port 

about four miles from the Gulf on the east side and named it Velasco for the old village now largely 

abandoned that had been closer to the shore. However, hard times following the banking Panic of 

1893 forced the company to surrender its harbor improvements to the government in 1899. The 

Corps of Engineers resumed work, but a lack of funds delayed the final dredging for larger vessels. 

During this period Congress had appropriated money for the Brazos River Lighthouse. A local 

dream since annexation to the United States, the five-section metal tower arrived from Philadelphia in 

❖ 

Loading sulphur into rail cars at 

Freeport. 

Technology and Newcomers Change Brazoria County ✦ 33

❖ 

Above: The Brazos River Lighthouse 

at Surfside erected in 1895. It was 

dismantled in 1967. 

Below: Birdseye view of Alvin in a 

promotional booklet directed to people 

of wealth and also “of limited means.” 

There were fine schools and no 

saloons. 

late 1895 and was assembled on the east side of 

the river about a mile from the gulf shore. The 

four legs and central metal cylinder enclosing a 

spiral staircase was topped with a metal and glass 

housing ninety-one feet above sea level that 

enclosed a third-order Fresnel lens. 

Engineers preferred metal towers for the 

southern coast because they offered less wind 

resistance to hurricanes. Two white frame residences 

rested on tall piers at the foot of the 

tower for the keepers and their families. On May 

30, 1896, the oil lamp flashed its beam for the 

first time almost sixteen miles out into the Gulf. 

A range light and fog bell at the end of the jetty 

aided vessels using the channel. The light was 

converted to electricity in 1938 and the structure 

still stood in 1967, when the Dow 

Chemical Company acquired the land and dismantled 

it. The sixteen-foot-tall metal lamp 

frame stands on the grounds of the old Brazoria 


County Courthouse, now the Historical 

Museum, as a mememto of the past. The delicate 

lens is displayed inside. 

Beginning in the 1880s, new towns developed 

in the northeastern prairies of the county 

when the Gulf, Colorado & Santa Fe Railroad 

completed its tracks northwestward from the 

Galveston causeway towards Richmond and 

Houston. The most significant of these new 

towns were Alvin and Pearland. Most residents 

came from the East or Midwest lured by developers 

who offered land and transporation at 

bargain rates. 

The New York based Day Land and Cattle 

Company sold tracts near the Galveston County 

line to ranchers, farmers and fruit growers. The 

regular mail stop at Mustang Bayou became 

Alvin, named for postmaster Alvin Morgan. As 

early as 1882, the community had churches and 

a school taught by the wife of the Methodist 

minister. The village incorporated in 1893 following 

a population boom. Local leadership 

continued the founders’ strong support of 

religon and education, and, in 1949, voters 

established Alvin Junior College, the first such 

institution in Brazoria County. 

A similar village developed less rapidly near 

the edge of Harris County along the Santa Fe’s 

spur track between Alvin and Houston. A siding 

switch called Mark Belt became the focus for 

development, and the land changed hands several 

times. The Brazoria Land and Cattle Company 

of Missouri sold the tract in 1892, and, two years 

later, the agent for W. Zychlinski filed a plat for 

❖ 

The plat for Alvin. 


❖ 

Above, left and right: Plats for 

Pearland. 

Below: Suburban Gardens Hotel, 

Pearland. 

“Pear-Land” at the Harris County Courthouse. 

The east-west streets were named for fruit as they 

are today, but the other streets were unnamed. 

That year the first one-room school opened with 

twenty-three pupils. A second room had to be 

added the next year, when more families arrived 

brought by new developer, S. M. Christensen and 

his Southern Homestead Company. 

The nascent town was severely damaged by 

the 1900 hurricane, and the railroad offered free 

transportation to sixty-eight families who wanted 

to leave. The area revived in 1910 when the 

Allison-Richey Suburban Garden Company promoted 

it as an “Agricultural Eden” where 

oranges could be grown commercially. 

Optimistic farm families arrived and planted 

strawberries and other fruits and vegetables. A 

combination of bad weather and plant disease 

injured the crops, but the community preservered 

by planting fig trees and later rice. The 

discovery of oil at the Hastings field finally 

brought prosperity and better roads to the agricultural 

community. 

All Brazoria County farmers endured unusual 

weather between 1890 and 1918. Cotton continued 

to be the main crop after sugar production 

declined when the United States lowered 

the protective tariff on cheap imported sugar in 


❖ 

Left: Velasco during 1899 flood, taken 

from the lighthouse. 

Below: Angleton residents escaping the 

disastrous floods of 1913. 

Bottom: Waterfowl crossing Alvin 

Street amid the debris after 1900 

hurricane. 

1890. A snow storm in 1895 dropped two feet 

of snow, destroying winter crops, and a major 

flood in 1899 inundated farms. The great 1900 

hurricane that left 6,000 people dead at 

Galveston also took lives and damaged property 

in Brazoria County. All of the county reported 

rain and wind damage—even the sugar cane 

was flattened, along with a number of buildings. 

There were casualties at Alvin, Angleton, 

Brazoria, Columbia, Liverpool, Sandy Point, and 

Velasco; thirteen convicts died at Lowood plantation. 

The new lighthouse, however, survived 

the storm, but buildings in Velasco and on the 

beach at Surfside (old Velasco) were damaged. 

Between 1909 and 1918 there were more 

freezes, floods and another hurricane. 

A political storm in the 1890s divided 

Brazoria County residents. The newcomers in 

the northeastern area complained about the distance 

to the 1840s frame courthouse at Brazoria 

on the west side of the river. The old town, the 

seat of government since 1837, and its surrounding 

area had a population of about 900 in 

1890. Several hotels catered to those who had 

business at the courthouse but the town had no 

railway connection. The latter fact was an 

embarassment for progressives and was a major 

factor in the removal of the courthouse. 

Tradition held that a courthouse should be 

close to the geographic center of a county and 


❖ 

Top (left to right): Lewis R. Bryan , Sr. 

(1858-1938) and Faustino Kiber 

(1852-1927), the founders of 

Angleton. 

Below: The depot at Chenango 

Junction, renamed “Anchor” in 1895 

by Jacob Whistler, who built a hotel 

there. Originally the end of the 

“Columbia Tap” railway from 

Houston to the Brazos River, the 

junction grew when the International 

and Great Northern absorbed the 

earlier line and the Houston and 

Brazos Valley Railroad bought the 

bankrupt 20-mile-long Houston and 

Brazos Valley Railroad (formerly the 

Velasco Terminal Railway) in 1908. 

The H&BVR built a 5-mile line and 

bridge across the Brazos to reach the 

Freeport Sulphur Company’s mine at 

Bryan Mound in 1913-1916. 

ideally no further than a man could ride on 

horseback in a day. Petitions to move the county 

seat in 1882 and 1891 failed to pass. Some of 

those in the eastern portion even suggested 

dividing Brazoria County into two counties and 

make Alvin the seat of a new county. 

In 1890 two men recognized the potential for 

a new county seat on the east side of the river 

and the need for a connecting railway between 

the end of the Columbia Tap and the booming 

new Velasco created by the Channel and Dock 

Company. Faustino Kiber, a Swiss immigrant 

businessman, and Lewis R. Bryan, Sr., a Brazoria 

County native, began buying small tracts of 

prairie land between the two points, totalling 

about 3,000 acres. The pair were successful 

visionaries and the founders of Angleton. 

Bryan had local name recognition and was a 

lawyer. His grandmother was Stephen F. Austin’s 

sister and his father, Moses Austin Bryan, was a 

veteran of the Battle of San Jacinto and the Civil 

War. When his family moved to Brenham in the 

1870s, young Lewis attended Baylor University 

then at nearby Independence, graduating in 

1877, and then studied law. Bryan met Kiber in 

Brenham when both lived on Main Street only a 

few dwellings apart. Six years older than Bryan, 

the Swiss immigrant had become a citizen in 

1873 and was a successful merchant. By 1890 

the pair were ready to become land developers 

in Brazoria County. 

After acquiring the land, they offered a rightof-way 

the length of their property to the new 

Velasco Terminal Railway Company in 1891 

contingent on completion of the railway within 

two years. This new rail connection between 

Chenango Junction (soon “Anchor”) and Velasco 

would allow passengers from Houston to com- 


❖ 

Left: The plat for Angleton. 

Below: George W. Phillips and his 

family pose in front of his hotel on 

Mulberry Street, c. 1912. In June 

1900, Angleton’s founders, L. R. 

Bryan and Faustino Kiber, lived there 

with their families. The hotel was 

consumed by fire in 1920. 

plete the trip to Velasco without having to transfer 

to a river steamer at the end of the Columbia 

Tap. The locals still called the old railway by that 

name although the tracks had become part of the 

Houston & Great Northern Railroad. 

The pair also platted the Bryan and Kiber 

subdivision along the proposed railway. The 

depot would be on the west side of Front Street 

between Mulberry and Myrtle. They named the 

town Angleton in honor of George Angle, a 

newcomer who was the general manager of the 

Velasco Railway, an officer in the Channel & 

Dock Company, and an investor in the Texas 

Land and Immigration Company. Mrs. Angle 

received a deed to a five-acre tract in the townsite 

during an elaborate naming ceremony at the 

Velasco Hotel in May, 1892. The Angles may 

have lived in Angleton briefly, but they left Texas 

when the Channel and Dock Company and 


❖ 

Right: The Danbury depot on the 

Missouri Pacific Road northeast of 

Angleton about 1912. 

Below: The engineer poses between his 

steam engine and coal car along the 

Velasco route of the Houston and 

Brazos Valley Railway. Chartered in 

1907, the company acquired the 

right-of-way and equipment of the 

defunct Velasco Terminal Railway and 

its successors. 

Angle’s other local investments were ruined by 

the economic hard times. It was at this time that 

the Channel and Dock Company’s improvements 

were turned over to the Corps of 

Engineers. An article in The Angleton Times, 

December 3, 1909, said the town was named for 

Mrs. Angle, perhaps misled by the 1892 ceremony, 

or merely a typographical error. Naming 

a town for a married woman was not in keeping 

with the times. 

Bryan and Kiber also offered a block for a 

future Brazoria County Courthouse if citizens 

voted to move the seat of government from 

Brazoria to Angleton. News of this proposal 

prompted county officials and residents of 

Brazoria to hurriedly replace the old wooden 

courthouse with a handsome three-story brick 

building in a belated effort to improve the 

town’s image. The ornate three-story brick 

structure completed in 1895 cost $90,000. 

Nevertheless, the confident Kiber and Bryan in 

July 1896 issued a deed for Block 13 in 

Angleton to J. D. Cannan, trustee for Brazoria 

County, provided an election was held immediately 

and voters approved the move to their new 

town. Voters went to the polls on September 15 

and endorsed the change 2,073 to 1,239. 

Local lore says Angleton residents, including 

Kiber, fearing destruction of county records 

rushed immediately to Brazoria to secure the 

documents when the results were announced. 

County records, however, contradict the romantic 

tale. County Judge A. R. Masterson reported 

the election results six weeks later on October 

24. Four days after that, Commissioner’s Court 

ordered certain records—Commissioner’s 

Court, the District Court, the Treasurer, and the 

Tax Assessor and Collector—be moved to J. D. 

Cannan’s building in Angleton. The court had 


ented the structure as a temporary courthouse. 

Other records would remain in Brazoria until 

the new Angleton Courthouse was finished. 

The new two-story brick courthouse with its 

center tower was ready on September 29, 1897 

at a cost of a modest $30,000. Two cisterns to 

store water flanked the north entrance. Inside, 

wood-burning cast-iron stoves provided heat, 

and oil lamps offered illumination for rare nighttime 

activities. In August, the county contracted 

with local wagoners to move the remaining 

records from Brazoria. The 1897 building was 

used until 1940 when the south portion of the 

present courthouse was built. The old building, 

minus its central tower, but with the additions 

made in the 1920s, now houses the Brazoria 

County Historical Museum. 

❖ 

Top, left: The three-story Romanesque 

Courthouse built in 1895 at Brazoria 

in an effort to keep the county seat. 

Abandoned in 1897 when voters chose 

to move the seat to Angleton. 

Top, right: Postcard of the 1897 

Brazoria County Courthouse and the 

first jail at Angleton which stood until 

1913. Notice the wooden fence and 

the lack of trees. 

Left: Courthouse with trees and iron 

fence surrounded by buggies. The 

seated persons and a small marquee 

indicate a festive gathering, perhaps 

the first county fair, c. 1910-1911. 


❖ 

Right: Brazoria County’s second jail, 

built in 1913, with Sheriff Joe H. 

Snow and Deputy Glenn Hanna 

posing under the trees on either side 

of the iron fence near the corner of 

Cedar and Chenango Streets. Snow 

was murdered in 1920 and citizens 

seized the guilty man and hanged him 

from a convenient tree. 

Below: Brazoria County Courthouse 

lost its tall center tower but gained 

palm trees by 1928, when the 

Angleton Fire Department posed with 

its fire truck. 

The town of Brazoria made the best of a bad 

situation, and the so-called “Folly” served as a 

safe refuge during floods and storms. Schools 

and churches rented portions of the elaborate 

building and some businesses had offices there 

until 1935. Commissioners Court ordered it 

demolished and used the material to pave roads. 

Discontent in Alvin over the location of the 

courthouse at Angleton continued into 1912- 

1913. The Alvin newspaper cited inequality of 

taxes and the distance to attend court; some 

Alvin residents even urged moving the county 

seat back to Brazoria in an effort to arouse support 

there. However, the county-wide vote in 

November 1913, was 1,390 to 1,082 for 

remaining at Angleton. This aborted effort, however, 

left bad feelings among the rival towns. 

A new age dawned for Brazoria County in 

January 1902, when the Tyndall-Wyoming Oil 

and Development Company found oil at 700 

feet northwest of West Columbia. That was just 

one year after the gusher at Spindletop near 

Beaumont, which established Texas oil prosperity. 

The county soon bragged it had one well and 

two derricks drilling, and promoters expected 

more production from the many gas seeps and 

“sour earth” throughout the county. 

It was sulphur, however, that put Brazoria 

County’s economy on a solid footing. In 1901, F. 

A. Lucas of Spindletop fame discovered sulphur 

in a well he was drilling at Bryan Mound southwest 

of present-day Freeport. Producing sulphur 

was expensive and the deposit was not 

exploited at that time. 

Over the next ten years, more sulphur 

deposits were found nearby, which led to pro- 


❖ 

West Columbia as an oil boom town 

in 1922 with mud streets and wooden 

sidewalks. 

duction. Extraction depended on a patented 

process where superheated water pumped 

underground melted the mineral deposit which 

was then forced to the surface by compressed air. 

The hot product was pumped through pipelines 

to a shipping point where it was cooled in vats. 

The oblong walls of the vats were removed, leaving 

huge yellow blocks ready for shipping. 

The Brazoria County discoveries occurred 

about the same time as the 1912 expiration of 

the patent, and just as important, access to 

cheap oil to heat the water. New York capitalists 

organized the Freeport Sulphur Company in 

1912 and Brazoria County’s second industry 

was born. The company laid off a new river port 

with free access to all—no wharfage or other 

charges on commerce. Governor O. B. Colquitt 

came to Freeport’s dedication on November 20, 

1912. The first wagon load of yellow sulphur 

lumps was prominently displayed in front of the 


❖ 

Right: The Tudor-style Tarpon Inn and 

the gardens opened in Freeport in 

1912 and closed in 1954. It was 

demolished for a shopping center. 

Below: A Freeport Sulphur Company 

ship at loading dock. 

new Tarpon Inn. This elegantly landscaped 

landmark hotel built by the company was 

demolished in 1956 to build a shopping center. 

The development of Freeport and the 

Sulphur Company revitalized work on the 

Brazos River Channel and the surrounding area. 

The Missouri, Kansas & Texas Railway planned 

to extend trackage to the port while the 

Houston & Brazos Valley Railway laid tracks in 

1912 from Velasco on the east bank to a wharf 

at the jetties. The Corps of Engineers planned a 

22-foot-deep channel from the Gulf to the new 

port, and, to solve the periodic flooding on the 

river, built a diversion dam near Velasco. A new 

river channel, completed in 1929, directed 

excess water southwest into the Gulf. The old 

riverbed with its distinctive horseshoe bend 

became the harbor. Thus Freeport became a 

major coastal port; local boosters called it “the 

port that sulphur made.” 

The new industrial developments along the 

Texas coast also revived the old idea of dredging 

an inland barge canal through the bays and 

marshlands. As early as 1873, Congress authorized 

a survey to connect the Mississippi River 

with the Rio Grande, but actual dredging was 

delayed by floods and budget constraints. In 

1905, area businessmen organized the Interstate 

Inland Waterway League (later the Gulf 

Intracoastal Canal Association) to educate the 

public and Congress about the need for such a 

waterway. By 1927 they persuaded Congress to 


❖ 

Left: Design for the construction of 

Freeport. 

Below: The 1928 bridge built on dry 

land waiting for the diversion of the 

riverbed. 


❖ 

Right: Mule power building the levee 

at Freeport in 1927, while the Brazos 

River channel was being diverted. 

Below: Dredging the new riverbed 

near Freeport in 1929. 

authorize a 9-foot-deep channel 100-feet wide 

from the Sabine River to Corpus Christi, which 

was completed in 1942, just in time for World 

War II. 

Meanwhile land promoters continued to 

develop northern Brazoria County. In 1908, the 

Immigration Land Company of Des Moines, 

Iowa, sent a trainload of settlers to establish a 

rural farm community. Iowa Colony borders State 

Highway 288, but at the time of founding, travelers 

used the Santa Fe station at tiny Manvel. Iowa 

Colony had sufficient population in 1919 to have 

a post office, and its residents began rice farming 

in 1920. Like Pearland, the discovery of oil nearby 

in 1948 helped the local economy. The community 

incorporated in 1973. 

The United States entry into World War I on 

April 6, 1917 was overshadowed locally when a 

gusher blew in three days later at Damon 

Mound in northwestern Brazoria County, producing 

ten to twenty thousand barrels a day. 

Damon’s Mound, rising about seventy feet above 

the surrounding area, was noted in the nineteenth 

century for its seeping medicinal water 

and its limestone deposit. Brazoria County’s 

importance as a source of petroleum and sulphur 

caused General John J. Pershing to immediately 

order protection for the vital industries. 

A United States Deputy Marshal and his guard 

watched over Freeport until the arrival of 

Company A of the 3rd Texas Militia. The 

demand for sulphur increased dramatically and 

lasted until the end of the war in November 

1918. Although 153 Brazoria County men were 

selected by the draft board and sent away, life 

continued much the same except that housewives 

had to be creative because of certain commodity 

shortages. The twenty-month duration 

of this war was not as severe as the next one 

coming in 1941. 


Public utilities were slow to come to Brazoria 

County, but by World War I some residents of 

Brazoria County had electricity and telephone 

service. At first the electricity in Angleton came 

from the local gin company owned by Faustino 

Kiber and was not available around the clock. 

Country dwellers without electricity often 

acquired washing machines powered by gasoline 

engines, like modern lawnmowers. An ice 

factory supplied blocks of ice to those who 

bought zinc-lined wooden ice boxes. 

More importantly for Brazoria County’s economy, 

another producing oil field appeared near 

West Columbia in January 1918 while the war 

❖ 

Above: Diversion of Channel Bridge 

for the Brazos Railroad. 

Left: The Angleton Gin and Power 

Company during the December 1913 

heavy rain and flood on the lower 

Brazos. Without a drainage system, 

the water stood for several days. In 

January 1913, the gin had received a 

franchise for an electrical generating 

plant that supplied select customers in 

town with power until 11 p.m. 


❖ 

Right: One room school at Clute 

c. 1920s. The small village developed 

along the Velasco Terminal Railway in 

the 1890s on land owned by Solomon 

J. Clute and brother, George. The two 

New Yorkers bought the John Hunter 

Herndon Plantation (once the Calvit 

place) in 1881 near old Velasco. 

Bottom: The Angleton Hotel with a 

board walkway into the muddy street 

before 1921. 

was still in progress. The promise of more sulphur 

at Hoskins Mound in southeast Brazoria 

County was temporarily ignored in favor of producing 

petroleum there. While the old Damon 

Mound field produced less and less oil in the 

1920s, the West Columbia field remained a 

steady producer even after its peak of over 

12,000,000 barrels in 1921. 

During the early years of production, the 

companies moved the oil in railroad tankcars 

but by 1910, eastern Brazoria County had small 

sections of pipelines carrying oil from producing 

wells to Galveston Bay where it was delivered 

to tankers or refineries. Finally in 1919, 

both Texaco and Humble (Exxon) began laying 

pipelines from West Columbia to gathering 

complexes such as Webster. 

Meanwhile, more oil discoveries in the county 

made it a major contributor to the industry. The 

Depression years in the early 1930s caused both 


production and prices to drop, but with Texaco’s 

discoveries at Manvel and improved drilling 

equipment, Brazoria County maintained its 

importance. Meanwhile, west of the Brazos near 

Old Ocean, independent drillers Dan Harrison 

and James S. Abercrombie, developed the deepest 

wells of that period. Former Governor Ross 

Sterling’s Sterling Oil and Refining Company also 

brought in a new field at West Columbia in 1936. 

Until 1935 when a gas processing plant was built, 

natural gas was flared. This practice lit up the 

night sky in some areas. 

❖ 

Above: A party of surf fishermen and 

women about 1920. 

Bottom: Street scene in early Freeport. 


❖ 

Top: The Angleton Fig Company, 

organized in 1927 after a visit to a 

similar plant at Friendswood, hired 

women to process and pack the fruit. 

At a time when married women 

usually did not work outside of the 

home, one persons recalled that 

“many” locals worked at the seasonal 

job. The “canning kitchen” also 

processed green beans. At least one 

worker has “bobbed” hair, unusual for 

the time period. 

Middle: Downtown Alvin in 

the 1920s. 

Bottom: Sharpe & Smith’s store, 

established in 1899 on Front Street 

along the railroad, attracted a crowd 

when the photographer arrived. 


❖ 

Left: Surfside Hotel c. 1900. 

Below: Edwards Building at Sealy and 

Hardy Streets c. 1909. Alvin 

Mercantile, Gem Drug Store and 

“Bo” Smith Grocery downstairs; 

two doctor’s offices upstairs. 

These new industrial developments in the 

1930s coincided with the Texas Centennial celebration 

in 1936. Descendants of the pioneer 

settlers and others interested in preserving local 

history took part in marking important sites and 

recognizing individual contributions by placing 

seventeen commemorative markers in Brazoria 

County. This recognition of things past at a time 

of advancing technological progress marked a 

coming of age for the community. 

In 1940, Brazoria County had almost tripled 

its population since 1890. Emerging from a 


❖ 

Right: The Angleton Theater on 

Velasco Street (Highway 35) in 1935 

with the ticket sellers and usherettes 

in summer uniforms including hats. 

The billboard indicated that an 

airplane romance was showing. 

Dr. W. C. Holt had his office upstairs. 

Below: Angleton's first bank in 1908, 

the Brazoria County State Bank, was 

refurbished in the 1980s and is 

occupied by the Southwest Land Title 

Company. 

rural area of 11,506 people dependent on agriculture, 

the increasingly industrialized area 

reached 27,069 persons in 1940. While agriculture 

remained an important component, it too 

had undergone change to a more mechanized 

system. Northern newcomers had changed the 

southern focus of the population, but southern 

ways towards race still prevailed. Oil wells on 

their land made some residents wealthy, but 

many clung to the old social ways and often preferred 

to be known as ranchers. Oil field workers 

at first were transient, but gradually the new 

industries provided jobs for a growing middle 

class who wanted permanent homes. As one 

indicator of increasing income, automobile registrations 

rose from 5,500 in 1935 to 8,262 in 

1940. Newcomers and the new technology 

wanted better roads, better schools, and other 

improvements to enhance local communities. 


Lynn M. Alperin, Custodians of the Coast: History of 

the United States Army Engineers at Galveston. 1977. 

T. Lindsay Baker, Lighthouses of Texas. College 

Station: Texas A & M University Press, 1991. 

Ida M. Blanchette, Babe on the Bayou: Alvin at 

Centennial. Waco: Texian Press, 1979. 

James A. Creighton, A Narrative History of Brazoria 

County. Waco: Texian Press, 1975. 

Frank J. Negovetich, “The Founding of Angleton, 

Texas.” December, 1972, manuscript in “Angleton” 

file, BCHM. 

Willard B. Robinson, Texas Public Buildings of the 

19th Century. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1974. 


DOW CHEMICAL, 

WORLD WAR II, AND 

THE NEW BRAZORIA COUNTY 

1941-1990s 

A new era was about to begin in Brazoria County. The residents had experienced the economic 

hardships of the Great Depression followed by the innovative changes in President Franklin Delano 

Roosevelt’s New Deal recovery programs. Various measures to aid agriculture helped local farmers but 

Texan antipathy toward organized labor prevented widespread union activity and kept wages lower 

than in the northern states. Brazoria County residents participated in some of the government programs, 

such as low interest loans for homebuyers, jobs for young men in the Civilian Conservation 

Corps (who built some of the Texas state parks), and the Social Security system that offered economic 

aid for the elderly and uniform unemployment benefits. For the first time, government helped individuals 

when private charities and organizations could no longer cope. 

Meanwhile World War II began in Europe in September 1939 when Germany invaded Poland and 

pushed into Norway, Holland, Belgium and France by July. In August 1940, the German Luftwaffe 

began bombing Great Britain. The United States tried to remain neutral but by 1941 offered substantial 

aid to Great Britain and Russia under the “Lend-Lease” program. For the first time in history, the 

U. S. had a peace-time draft; all men between age 21 and 35 had to register for military service. The 

first draft numbers were selected on October 29, 1940. By that time, Japan, a large purchaser of U. S. 

scrap metal, was threatening southeast Asia. A year later when it signed a power pact with Germany 

❖ 

Lake Jackson residents posing to 

encourage residents to have “victory 

gardens” about 1942. 

Dow Chemical, World War II, and the New Brazoria County ✦ 53

❖ 

Dow Plant B in 1969. The facility 

was built by the United States 

government during World War II just 

north of Freeport on the east bank of 

the Brazos River and leased to Dow 

Chemical. Dow bought it after 1946. 

and Italy in September 1941, Roosevelt embargoed 

exports of metal to all except Western 

Hemisphere countries. 

Against this backdrop, the directors of the 

Freeport Sulphur Company decided to sell their 

plant in 1940, although the company continued 

to mine sulphur nearby. The demand for sulphur 

declined after World War I and the company 

had closed the plant between 1921 and 

1922. Although production resumed, it was 

limited. A sense of responsibility about their 

town required any purchaser to commit to a 

sizeable investment in improvements. Dow 

Chemical of Michigan met the challenge and the 

transfer was made. 

Dow needed a site near saltwater to extract 

magnesium (10 pounds required 1,000 gallons), 

plus ample fresh water for processing, and a 

deep water port. Freeport met these needs since 

the river channel had been deepened to 34 feet. 

Disposing of waste water was easily solved by 

moderate rechanneling, and within 25 miles of 

the plant were the needed oil, gas, and salt 

dome brine for production. An added bonus 

was the Intracoastal Canal that permitted barge 

connections to Chicago and Pittsburgh. 

Construction began on Dow’s Plant A on private 

land near Surfside Beach in March 1940. 

Pullman cars served as temporary quarters while 

the construction of barracks began, and, within 

two weeks, the Dow Hotel was finished. The only 

road to Plant A was a narrow black-top which 

flooded during high tides; oyster shell helped 

raise the roadbed, and the state highway department 

soon assumed responsibility. An American 

Automobile Association map published in late 

1940 shows former local Highway 19 from 

Houston to Angleton and Velasco renumbered as 

State Highway 288. By November 1941, just 

before Pearl Harbor, Dow announced plans to 

build employee housing, and seventy were under 

construction on fifty acres at “West” Freeport. 

Even before 1941, President Roosevelt placed 

the United States in a defensive mode while aiding 

the European allies against Germany and 

Italy. Brazoria County officials, surrounded by oil 


fields and vital industry, had begun emergency 

planning early. In August 1941, the county judge 

announced an aircraft warning system manned 

by civilians to protect both homes and industries. 

Matagorda Island just west of the San Bernard 

became a practice airforce bombing range, and, 

in September, a landing field was laid off on the 

old Moeller Ranch near Chocolate Bayou. 

When the first reports of the Japanese attack 

reached Dow on December 7, 1941, the head of 

security requested military protection. Within 

three days 150 federalized Texas National 

Guardsmen arrived. A company of regular 

infantry soon joined them and the Coast 

Artillery installed two six-inch naval guns on the 

beach at Quintana overlooking the harbor. The 

military erected two 50-foot-tall look-out towers: 

one near the site of the old Surfside Hotel 

and the other near San Luis Pass. A company of 

gunners and seven anti-aircraft guns moved into 

Plant A and also Plant B then under construction 

on the east side of the river just north of 

Freeport. Meanwhile mounted members of the 

U. S. Coast Guard patrolled the beaches with 

❖ 

Above: A West Columbia oil field. 

Left: The road leading to the 

community erected to house Dow 

employees. 


❖ 

Emergency housing in 1940-1942 for 

the thousands of newcomers working 

at Dow. At first, some squatted in 

shacks, tents, and trailers until 

construction workers erected the 

modular barracks, duplexes, and 

single family houses in a temporary 

planned community laid off by Dow. 

Called “Camp Chemical” by locals, 

the new town had its own water and 

sewer system, a post office, a fire 

department, and stores on the east 

side of the Brazos near the 

magnesium plant. These pictures 

show the progressive development 

of the community. 



❖ 

Above: Modular duplex housing for 

Dow employees. 

Below: Lake Jackson public relations 

photo in 1943 to urge housewives to 

use the community transportation and 

save gasoline and tires. 

dogs. The precautionary sundown curfew at the 

beach annoyed residents and caused hardship 

for those who lived there permanently. 

Rushing Plant B to completion by June 1942 

created a desperate need for housing. 

Construction workers, living in shacks and tents 

themselves, hurried to complete “Camp 

Chemical,” the planned community of duplexes 

and other buildings needed for Dow workers 

near Plant B. 

Brazoria County residents joined in wartime 

measures by becoming air-raid wardens to 

instruct neighbors about the need for emergency 

blackout procedures—no outside lights, 

dark curtains on the windows, and emergency 

provisions in each house. Others trained as aircraft 

observers and manned observations posts. 

Rationing of scarce items needed for the military 

began immediately. Tires and gasoline were 

among the first—the latter to restrict driving to 

save tires. Butadiene was in the future and the 

only rubber source was captured by the 

Japanese. Everyone, even school children, 

helped in the scrap drives to collect old tires, 


metal, tin cans, paper, and even cooking grease 

for recycling. Rationing of sugar, some canned 

goods, meat, and shoes followed. Every family 

was urged to plant a “victory” garden to help 

feed themselves. Some residents considered the 

new imposition of daylight savings time the 

greatest wartime aggravation. It had been adopted 

as a temporary emergency measure for the 

first time during World War I. 

Angleton men organized a bus company to 

provide transportation for industrial workers; 

some lived as far away as Bay City, Wharton, 

and Rosenberg besides the various communities 

within the county. In 1942, the abandoned 

smoke-stacks at Bryan Mound on the east bank 

of the new river channel near the Intracoastal 

Canal were dynamited to prevent enemy ships 

or planes from using them to target the area. 

During this same period the Old Ocean Phillips 

66 Sweeny Refinery began as a government 

facility to produce high-octane aviation fuel. 

After the war, Phillips acquired the plant and 

began a large petrochemical complex. 

With a third plant, Dow Magnesium, in the 

planning stage, Dow received government funds 

to build 3,000 more homes at Camp Chemical. 

The temporary village had its own water and 

sewer system, a bank, post office, and fire 

department. Eventually the community of 7,100 

had more homes than any town in the county! 

The prefabricated buildings were erected in 

record time by 2,000 carpenters. In July 1942, 

Dow announced another plant for Styrene and 

even more housing would be needed. 

Angleton and other nearby towns were not 

interested in creating subdivisions or increasing 

housing leaving the problem to Dow leadership. 

Alden B. Dow, brother of Dow’s president and 

the architect of the temporary Camp Chemical, 

rose to the challenge and planned the new city 

of Lake Jackson. Teamed with engineer T. J. 

Dunbar, the pair designed a community of treeshaded 

curving streets in an effort to retain the 

flavor of Abner Jackson’s plantation in a modern 

setting. Avoiding the pitfalls of a company town, 

some land was left for private developers. 

Even the Brazoria County Fairgrounds, 

begun with 20 acres in 1939 and increased to 

50 in 1941, became Camp Angleton during the 

war to house a radar unit of the U. S. Signal 

Corps. The community welcomed the men by 

furnishing a lounge and organizing baseball and 

social entertainment. 

In 1944 and 1945, German prisoners-of-war 

including some of Rommel’s North Africa Corps 

occupied the fairgrounds. The Brazoria County 

Fat Stock and Fair Association and county officials 

entered an agreement with the federal government 

in November 1943 to accept about 250 

prisoners whose labor would help local farmers. 

The first Germans arrived in the spring of 1944 

and after the harvest the camp temporarily 

closed. The lease expired in February 1945 and 

the war ended soon afterward. Alvin also had a 

POW camp in 1943 as a means to solve its labor 

shortage for harvesting the local rice crop. Alvin 

businessmen asked for 400 men and the 

Germans were housed about two miles from 

town along the road to Rosharon. 

The Brazoria County Fair resumed in 1945, 

using some of the renovations made by the gov- 

❖ 

The 1938 Brazoria County Fair’s 

Rodeo Queen, Mary Murray (Mrs. 

Victor Stasney), and her horse. That 

same year, the Brazoria County Fair 

Association was formed. 


ernment. The county fair tradition may have 

begun as early as 1910 with exhibits on the 

courthouse grounds and parades. The Brazoria 

County Fair Association organized in 1938 to 

promote and sponsor an annual fair to show 

livestock and agricultural products and gradually 

grew to include carnival and rodeo activities. 

The largely volunteer effort attracts almost a 

quarter million visitors to the fairgrounds. Its 

acreage, permanent buildings, large attendance, 

and support of scholarships for young people 

allow residents to boast it is the largest county 

fair in Texas. 

Even before the end of WW II, the success of 

Lake Jackson as a new community, plus the 

increasing population in Clute, Freeport, Lake 

Barbara, Richwood, and other small villages in 

the 214 square-mile-area including the port and 

industrial area, led to the term “Brazosport.” By 

August 1944, the Brazosport Independent School 

District was created, and soon area businessmen 

formed a joint Chamber of Commerce to pro- 

❖ 

Top: A 1997 view of the large air 

conditioned exhibit hall at the 

fairgrounds. 

Right: “The Club” at the Brazoria 

County Fairgrounds at Angleton in 

1997. In the early years of the 

county fair, this little building served 

as the first exhibit hall for African 

American exhibits. 


mote the combined communities. Although 

Brazosport Junior College was authorized in 

1948, it was twenty years before it was organized. 

In the 1950s a new wave of industrialization 

began when “user” or “customer” companies 

moved to the area to make use of Dow products. 

One of the first was Monsanto, a company 

focusing on expanding raw materials extracted 

from petroleum products. Officials selected a 

3000-acre site on Chocolate Bayou and construction 

began in 1961. Within a year a thermal 

unit for purifying ethylene and propane gas 

opened. A second block, the hydrocarbon arc, 

could upgrade benzene and naphthalene, in 

addition to creating by-products. Dow’s presence 

at Brazosport attracted other plants, such 

as Dow Badische Company, E. J. Lavino & 

Company, Nalco Chemicals, and Red Barn 

Chemicals, processors of chemical fertilizers. 

At Freeport an innovative salt-water conversion 

plant opened in 1961 to extract fresh water 

and return the remaining brine to the Gulf. This 

plant was one of five experimental units nationwide 

and was scheduled to shut down in 1965. 

This unique cooperative effort between a 

municipality, industry, and the federal government 

was the first to supply the water needs of 

a town, and the project was continued until the 

end of 1970. About that time, the Brazos River 

Authority, a project developed in the 1930s to 

control flooding and distribute water, had the 

necessary dams and canals to supply industrial 

water needs of the Gulf Coast south of Houston. 

During the 1960s, Buccaneer Gas Company, 

using new technology, opened a plant to process 

the product from offshore gas wells. The Blue 

Dolphin Company built a 40-mile-long pipeline 

from the offshore site to Freeport. 

With a stable diversified economy from 

industrialization and improvements in agricultural 

production, Brazoria County residents had 

the means and inclination to develop cultural 

activities. Reflecting a nationwide trend in the 

early 1900s, local women assumed important 

roles in community improvement through garden 

clubs, literary societies, and the umbrella 

Federation of Women’s Clubs. Libraries were 

one of the first projects. 

The Alvin Aethaneum Club and the Women’s 

Study Club in Freeport had organized small volunteer 

libraries in their communities by the 

1920s. When County Commissioners sought support 

for building a new courthouse in 1940, 

members of the Brazoria County Federation of 

Women’s Clubs offered to support the bond issue 

if a library room was included in the building 

❖ 

An aerial view of downtown Freeport 

in 1955. Notice the wide esplanade 

leading to the Tarpon Inn and its 

circular drive. Both diagonal and 

parallel parking was allowed in the 

nearby business district. Boats are 

docked along the harbor in the 

background. 


❖ 

Right: Governor James S. Hogg 

purchased the Patton Plantation in 

1901. The Pattons sold the property 

in 1869 and a number of others 

occupied the house before Hogg 

bought it. Repairs and modifications 

followed. 

Below: The Angleton High School on 

Locust Street near the courthouse in 

1936-37. The white clothing suggests 

it was before a baccalaureate 

ceremony or graduation and the open 

windows are a reminder that there 

was no air conditioning. 

plans. The County Library, staffed by professionals, 

opened June 18, 1941 in a room on the third 

floor of the new courthouse. The small town 

libraries were soon incorporated into the county 

system. Private cars and trains carried books 

between the branch libraries until 1942 when a 

pick-up truck was acquired as a temporary bookmobile. 

Hinged panels on the bed could be raised 

as a canopy revealing four shelves with several 

hundred books. Five years later, in 1947, a regular 

bookmobile served county needs. That same 

year the County Library in Angleton moved from 

the courthouse into the first floor of the old 1897 

courthouse. It remained there until December, 

1978 when the new county library building 

opened a few blocks away on Cedar Street. 

Interest in preserving historic structures 

began after 1958 when Miss Ima Hogg of 

Houston renovated the old Patton Plantation 

home purchased by her father, Governor James 

S. Hogg, in 1901. She donated the site, once the 

1824 headright of Martin Varner, to the state 

and provided funds for its preservation. The 

Patton family owned the tract from 1834 to 

1869 and grew cotton and sugar, followed by a 

number of other occupants. The Hogg family 

remodeled the house in the early 1900s for use 

as a comfortable retreat. Under the care of the 

Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, Hogg 

family heirlooms and documents can be viewed 

by visitors touring the Varner-Hogg State 

Historical Park near West Columbia. 

Local communities lack funds to undertake 

major restoration of the diminishing number of 

historic structures in their areas. In Brazoria 

County time, windstorms, and floods took a 


heavy toll. Finally, under the guidelines of the 

Texas Historical Commission established by the 

Texas Legislature in 1953, each county created 

its own county historical commission and qualifying 

sites were identified with uniform state 

markers. The Brazoria County Historical 

Commission has also published two books: one 

a narrative history by James A. Creighton that 

covered events to 1970 appeared in 1976, while 

a book of photographs of early buildings and 

scenes throughout the county appeared in 1986. 

The Bicentennial of the United States in 1976 

and the growing interest in historic preservation 

as a stimulus to tourism helped save the 1897 

courthouse. County officials considered demolishing 

the deteriorating building in 1978, but 

community leaders rallied to save the eightyyear-old 

structure. The Brazoria County 

Historical Commission signed a 100-year lease, 

promising to bring the building up to standards 

and to open a county historical museum within 

two years. The Brazoria County Historical 

Museum, Inc., a private, non-profit organization, 

was created to begin the necessary massive 

renovation. Members solicited money from 

foundations, businesses, and private donors 

❖ 

Above: White bobby-socks, penny 

loafers, and bouffant hair are popular 

styles at the Angleton High School on 

Downing Road in the 1960s. The new 

school’s first graduation was in 1961. 

By the 1990s, this building became 

the Angleton Middle School. 

Left: Aerial view of the Angleton High 

School and the lighted athletic 

facilities at the Downing Road 

campus in the 1970s. Building at 

center with curved drive is the 

original school, built in 1960. 


❖ 

Top: The new Angleton High School 

on Henderson Road in the 1990s. 

Below: The new Abraham B. Marshall 

High School at Angleton was 

dedicated on May 18, 1958 at the 

time of segregated schools for blacks 

and whites. It was named for the first 

teacher who began his career in a 

one-room building in Snipe, a farming 

community southwest of Angleton 

near Oyster Creek. 

while certain tax revenues were allocated for 

structural repairs. 

The Museum opened in a nascent form in 

1981 to comply with the lease, and two years 

later, its small staff occupied half of the building 

with county offices briefly continuing to occupy 

the other portion. The refurbished Museum now 

houses outstanding local history exhibits, and 

also maintains a research center with books, photographs, 

clipping files, and a number of other 

historical records cared for by a professional staff. 

Located only a few steps away from official county 

records at the courthouse, researchers have a 

wealth of local material at one site. 

The growing national awareness about protecting 

the environment instead of carelessly 

polluting the land, air, and water targeted a 

neglected treasure in Brazoria County in the 

1960s. The marshlands along Brazoria County’s 

southeast coast were known as the “Slop Bowl” 

before the U. S. Fish & Wildlife Service, part of 

the Department of the Interior, declared it a 

refuge for waterfowl, migratory birds, alligators, 

muskrats, and even the endangered Texas Red 

Wolf. The Brazoria National Wildlife Refuge 

began with 9,600,000 acres but planned to 

encompass 12,000,000 eventually. The area 

begins near the Galveston County line and 


includes Rattlesnake Point, Lost, Salt, Wolf, 

Nick’s, and Cox’s lakes. 

A second salt marsh on the western edge of 

Brazoria County also became a refuge. This 

20,000-acre-tract near the Cedar Lakes is 

known as the San Bernard National Wildlife 

Refuge. These habitats have become an important 

economic benefit the county by attracting 

birders and other environmentally aware visitors 

each year. Some of the best bird viewing along 

the coastal flyways is in Brazoria County and 

visitors arrive by bus and private car. 

Recognizing the economic benefits 

of tourism and the desire of visitors to enjoy 

Gulf beaches, the state acquired Mud Island 

at San Luis Pass and nearby Bird Island in 

1973 for park development. Present-day visitors 

to the beaches have no idea that as early as 

1835 families camped on the beaches at 

Quintana and Velasco to escape the heat of the 

inland prairies. 

Stephen F. Austin’s cousin, Mary Austin 

Holley, a widow with grown children, recorded 

the events of her visit to the Brazos. She noted 

the number of ladies who “bathe in the surf” just 

as some did at Atlantic beach resorts. Mrs. 

Holley also commented on the fine seafood 

caught at the mouth of the Brazos River. 

❖ 

Top: The Marshall High School 

marching band about 1963. 

Below: Marshall High School’s first 

football team in the fall of 1958. 


❖ 

Right: Students in Marshall High's 

Library. 

Below: The semi-submersible ship 

Swift anchored at Freeport in 1997 is 

loaded amidships with a multi-tiered 

platform destined for the Gulf. 

“They take fish as fast as the line is thrown in. 

Crabs are large and fine. Find it very agreeable— 

as good for the health as any seashore....” 

South county businessmen quickly took 

advantage of the economic impact of tourism 

and began catering to the needs of visitors 

beyond just shelter and food. Offshore fishing 

had long been available from Freeport, but other 

sports and hobby requirements received attention. 

The Columbia Lakes Resort, Conference 

Center, and Country Club was developed to 

serve the needs of local businesses and others. 

In 1981 the Brazoria County Airport opened, 

providing an alternative landing field for general 

aviation pilots and corporate aircraft. 

Tourism, educational features, and a saltwater 

hatchery combine at the Lake Jackson Sea 

Center Texas. Sponsored by Dow Chemical 

Company, the Gulf Conservation Association, 

and the Texas Parks and Wildlife, the visitor 

center has aquaria, displays, and touching pools 

to instruct the public as well as the largest red 


drum hatchery in the world. Moreover, the 

Brazosport Center for the Arts and Sciences 

adjacent to Brazosport College provides opportunities 

for enjoyment of art, music, and drama. 

The Museum of Natural Science houses an 

extensive shell collection and also a nature center 

and planetarium. Brazosport College offers 

both the usual academic courses plus specially 

tailored occupational classes for local industry, 

as well as continuing adult education. 

In recent years, new industries have come to 

the county attracted by the opportunities and 

amenities of the area. One is BASF Corporation, 

a producer of various chemicals and plastics 

used in a wide variety of things—from hair care 

products, and animal feed to carpet and wall 

coverings, to name a few. Three medical and health 

care industries located in the county in the 1970s 

and 1980s. Sulzer Intermedics, Inc., Mallinckrodt 

Medical, Inc. and Roche Vitamins, Inc. produce 

pacemakers, diagnostic catheters, and dietary supplements 

at Angleton and Freeport. 

Thus, after 176 years of Anglo-American 

occupation, the lower Brazos River Valley still 

attracts newcomers. The first settlers saw only 

the lush vacant land ready to produce cotton 

and sugar and the convenient waterway to connect 

them with New Orleans markets. While the 

bondsmen who accompanied the first settlers 

had limited choice, they too adapted to and 

adopted Brazoria County while providing the 

labor to develop the first economic base. 

As time passed and new technology changed 

agriculture and transportation, northerners and 

Europeans came to take advantage of economic 

opportunities in the area. Mining and refining 

minerals that lay below the prairie or in the seawater 

again changed the economic focus of local 

residents. It appears that only technology changes, 

while local residents recognize the opportunities 

offered just like the pioneers in the 1820s. 

What the new century will bring remains 

speculation. But if the past is an indicator, it 

appears Brazoria County residents will meet 

new challenges and opportunities in the same 

manner as earlier residents. 


James A. Creighton, History of Brazoria County; A 

Window to the Past: A Pictorial History of Brazoria 

County, Texas, Brazoria County Historical Museum 

and Brazoria County Historical Commission, 1986. 

J. P. Bryan,[Sr.] ed., Mary Austin Holley: The Texas 

Diary, 1835-1838, University of Texas at Austin, 1965. 

❖ 

The busy Port of Freeport and 

the Intracoastal Canal from the 

air in 1996. 


❖ 



SHARING THE HERITAGE 

historic profiles of 

businesses and organizations 

that have contributed to 

the development and economic base 

of Brazoria County 


Texas Gulf Bank, N. A. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70 

Offshore Oil Services . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72 

Angleton Coca-Cola Bottling Company . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76 

Industrial Specialists, Inc. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78 

The Dow Chemical Company, Texas Operations . . . . . . . . 80 

Texas Dow Employees Credit Union . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82 

Brazosport Independent School District. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84 

Gulf States, Inc. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86 

Columbia-Brazoria Independent School District . . . . . . . . 88 

RiceTec, Inc. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90 

Brazoria County Abstract Company . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92 

Port Freeport . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94 

Yellow Jacket Construction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96 

U. S. Contractors, Inc. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98 

Ron Carter Automotive Center. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100 

Brazosport College . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102 

Ramada Inn, Lake Jackson . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104 

Angleton Independent School District . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106 

Bill & Marie DeWitt Family & 

DeWitt Furniture Company . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108 

Columns, Inc. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110 

J. S. McKinney, Inc. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111 

Freeport Welding and Fabricating, Inc. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112 

Country Hearth Inn . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113 

Macon Sash & Door . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114 

Tri-Construction Company, Inc. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115 

Petrogas Process Systems, Inc.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116 

Western Seafood of Freeport . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117 

Jimmy Phillips . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118 

BASF Corporation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119 

Our Lady Queen of Peace . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120 

Pearland Independent School District . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121 

Prudential Allied, Realtors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122 

Gates Machine Tool Repair, Inc. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123 

Team Industrial Services, Inc. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124 

First State Bank . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125 

Snowden Engineering, Inc. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126 

The Brevard Company . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127 

Phillips 66 Company Sweeney Refinery . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128 

Texas Honing, Inc. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129 

A. C. Sheet Metal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130 

Brazoria County Historical Museum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131 

Barta Brothers Propane . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132 

Pearland Economic Development Corporation . . . . . . . . . 133 

Alvin Community College . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134 

Sulzer Intermedics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135 

FRIENDS 

The Dow Chemical 

Company, U.S.A. 

Industrial Hoist 

Services 

Schlumberger Well 

Services 

Sharing the Heritage ✦ 69

❖ 

Below: Freeport National Bank, 

chartered 1913 

TEXAS GULF 

BANK, N.A. 

Bottom: Texas Gulf Bank, Freeport 

Freeport National Bank, chartered in 1913, is 

the forerunner of today’s Texas Gulf Bank, N.A. 

The bank’s opening came just one year after the 

Freeport Sulphur Company moved into Brazoria 

County and the City of Freeport was founded. 

The bank continued operating as Freeport 

National for 69 more years, until Texas bank 

branching laws changed and the bank changed 

its name to Texas Gulf Bank, N.A. Over the 

years the bank has enjoyed prosperous revenues 

and profits, with which it has made physical 

improvements to the premises, expanded product 

lines and added specialized equipment to 

serve customers better. 

Despite such hardships as Hurricane Carla 

and a decline in shrimp production, the `60s 

brought with it the bank’s 50th anniversary, and 

new highs were reached as the 1969 annual 

report notes records in gross and net incomes. 

Both showed increases over 20% from the previous 

year. 

In 1970, the bank moved into its modern 

three-story bank building and office facility on 

downtown Freeport’s Second Street. The creation 

of several community service activities was 

born in this decade, including the Gadabouts 

Travel Group, now known as the Texas Gulf 

Coasters. The bank’s holding company, First 

Freeport Corporation, was formed in 1972, and 

the bank’s name was changed to First Freeport 

National Bank. Expansion continued with the 

opening of Chemical National Bank in Clute in 

1976. Despite national economic and energy 

problems, the `70’s closed on a positive note for 

First Freeport Corporation. 

With the `80’s came additional expansion, 

including the opening of Alvin National Bank in 

1980 and the addition of Trust services for its 

customers in 1982. The Trust Department offers 

Trust and Estate Planning services through a 

local, on-site representative. In 1982, First 

Freeport Corporation changed its name to Texas 

Gulf Bancshares and further grew in size with 

the addition of Coastal National Bank in 

Angleton in 1983. 

With new bank branching laws taking effect, 

all the banks merged and took on the name 

Texas Gulf Bank, N.A. in 1990. Then in 1992, 

the Alvin location was sold to The Express Bank. 

Also in 1992, the bank added a full service 

Mortgage Department, making it easy for customers 

to get both a construction loan and permanent 

mortgage financing under one roof. Two 

years later, in 1994, Texas Gulf Bank opened its 

Lake Jackson location and acquired the 

Brazosport Boulevard location of First 

Commerce, bringing the total number of 

branches to five. Further expanding its product 

line to meet customers’ needs, the bank opened 

its PrimeVest Investment Center. Now customers 

can take care of their investment needs 

at the same place they do their banking. 

In 1995, Texas Gulf Bank donated its Second 

Street Freeport building to the city and now 

maintains a smaller facility within that location. 

As of 1997, Texas Gulf Bank continues to 

grow as the largest community bank in the area, 

with assets over $200 million. President and 

CEO, James F. Brown, Jr., attributes a continua- 


❖ 

Left: Texas Gulf Bank, Clute 

Below: Texas Gulf Bank, Angleton 

tion of favorable earnings to following the 

bank’s vision. That vision is to make its products 

and services available to every individual and 

business in the market area by offering a full line 

of financial products and services, providing 

quality, efficient and responsive service and to 

accommodate customers with convenient locations 

and hours. 


OFFSHORE 

OIL SERVICES 

❖ 

Top, right: Mr. and Mrs. Raymond 

Muchowich 

Right: Captain Carl and Anna 

Muchowich were married in the 

early 1900s. 

Successful businesses evolve to meet changing 

times and needs, and that’s exactly what has 

occurred in the Muchowich family’s business 

over the past 70 years. 

Raymond Muchowich, owner of Offshore Oil 

Services in Freeport, says it all started with his 

father, Carl Muchowich, who was an entrepreneur 

in the best sense of that word. 

“First he had a dairy between Port Arthur 

and Beaumont,” Muchowich says. “He sold it in 

1924 and went to Port Arthur, which then had 

a district with badly run-down houses. He 

bought a half block in this area in 1925, burned 

down the buildings on that property, and built a 

garage apartment, using the downstairs portion 

to store produce. He would go to Louisiana and 

buy sweet potatoes and citrus fruit by the bobtail 

truck loads, and sell it.” 

As the business prospered, he used the large 

space available to him to store other items, 

branching into the purchase of wood, which 

was cut by others, brought in with a horse and 

wagon, and sold by the cord. 

SCRAP BUSINESS 

Ready for his next venture by 1928, the elder 

Muchowich constructed a Gulf service station 

on the corner of his property. He also began 

buying and selling scrap – iron, brass, copper, 

batteries, and tires. 

“He sold old tires to the Japanese,” Raymond 

Muchowich says. “He paid 10 to 15 cents a 

pound for copper, and it went up as high as 80 

cents a pound.” 

With such success in his business ventures, it 

must have appeared that nothing could go 

wrong. But then came 1929, and when the stock 

market collapsed, the demand for scrap plunged 

along with it. The scrap metal and tires 

Muchowich had on hand were suddenly worth 

less than they had cost him. 

But even in the face of the Depression, Carl 

Muchowich was a canny businessman. “He was 

among the first at the bank,” his son recalls. “He 

managed to withdraw $750, and he sold out of 

the junk business, including not only his scrap, 

but also the nine trucks he had put on the highway 

while he was buying junk.” 

SHRIMPING BUSINESS 

Now Muchowich was a businessman without 

a business, but that situation was short lived. He 

had sometimes accompanied one of the truck 

drivers in his travels connected with the junk 

business, and had met the driver’s brother, with 

whom they sometimes stayed in Palacios. This 

acquaintance suggested that Muchowich buy a 

load of shrimp at the wharf there, and take it 

back to sell in the Port Arthur area. Muchowich 

bought fine white jumbo shrimp, which he sold 

at about five cents a pound, leading the family 

into its era in the shrimp business. 


In 1930-31, “Captain Carl” and his family 

came to Freeport during the summer, and 

brought followers. Although the family had no 

boats of their own, shrimp were plentiful right 

off the jetties, at the sea buoy three miles out, 

and could be unloaded at the city dock in 

Freeport. The business was so successful that the 

family moved to Freeport, arriving just in time to 

experience the 1932 hurricane that came ashore 

in August and almost destroyed the little town. 

“I was on a 40-foot shrimp boat blocked up 

on the bank where the shrimping docks were,” 

81-year old Raymond Muchowich recalls. 

“During the rain my parents and my brother – 

everybody but me – stayed in the stairwell of the 

Freeport Sulphur Company building. I was on 

the boat. Jack Spencer, who ran the Port Café, 

and my dad came down in a Model T Ford touring 

car. On their way, the top blew off. By the 

time they got there, the boat had started to float. 

I remember I was sure glad to see them.” 

At that time the family’s 20- by 20-foot 

seafood vault, built flat on the ground, contained 

3,500 pounds of shrimp, about 500 

pounds of various kinds of fish, and three 300- 

pound blocks of ice, as well as some home brew 

that had been left iced down there. As the family 

members sheltered in the stairwell, the wind 

blew this vault—weighing more than two and a 

half tons in contents, alone—onto its side, with 

the door on top. 

About 7 a.m., after the worst of the storm 

had passed, Raymond Muchowich, who was 

then 16 years old, climbed down into the vault 

through the door, popped the top off a quart of 

the home brew, and drank most of it while he 

shoveled shrimp. 

“They would pass me a tub and I’d fill it and 

pass it back to them,” he recalls. 

It was obviously important that they salvage 

whatever they could, as the storm had been devastating 

to the family, as well as to most others 

in the area. 

“Not a board was left on our house right 

across from the East Brazos River,” Muchowich 

says. “The family managed to grab some lumber 

that had washed onto the river bank, and we 

used that to build another fish house.” 

About this time the family also got into the 

oyster business, depending primarily on the 

yield around Cow Trap, where Raymond 

Muchowich says “some 

of the prettiest oysters 

you’ve ever seen” were 

found. “We would buy 

them and open them and 

sell for so much a gallon, 

right on the banks of the 

Old Brazos River.” 

They continued in the 

shrimp business after 

1932, and had three small 

shrimp boats built in 

Galveston and a 40-foot 

❖ 

Above, left to right: 

Captain Carl Muchowich (whose title 

was entirely complimentary, as he 

never operated a boat for his 

company) is flanked by his sons, Joe 

(left) and Raymond. 

Captain Carl Muchowich surveys his 

“kingdom.” 

Marilyn Muchowich Stanley, 

President, with Offshore Oil Services, 

Inc. Intracoastal Canal Facility in the 

background. 

Below: One of the boxes used by 

Muchowich frozen shrimp is kept by 

the family along with photos and 

other memorabilia. 


❖ 

Bottom, right: The Miss Freeport, 

originally built as a shrimp boat, was 

lengthened from 75 feet to 105 feet by 

adding a 30 foot section to its center. 

Below and opposite: The six aluminum 

crew and small supply boats operated 

by Offshore Oil Services, Inc. all 

bear family names: Hannah Ray, 

Marilyn M, Joe Ray, Hayden, Joe M, 

and Evelyn M. Four are 110-foot boats, 

while the Evelyn M. is 130 foot. All do 

about 22 knots. 

boat built in Biloxi, Mississippi. The demand for 

shrimp was larger than could be supplied by their 

own boats, however, so they also bought shrimp 

from other boats and processed them. 

“We sold most of them in Houston and 

Dallas,” Muchowich says. “We finally got 

enough money to buy a second-hand truck, and 

hauled them to the markets.” 

Between 1946 and 1950 they bought two 

shrimp boats. Through the years, almost all of 

their boats have been named for Muchowich family 

members, including, at various times, the 

Captain Carl, Joe M, Anna M, Pearl M, Marilyn M, 

Evelyn M, Joe M, Jr., and the Carl M II, among others. 

Then they ran out of family names, they also 

had the Miss Freeport. 

In 1950, the Miss 

Freeport was converted 

from 75 feet to 105 feet in 

length. This was accomplished 

by having the 

boat cut in half, and 

adding a 30-ft. section to 

the middle. This enlarged 

boat, which was used for 

seismograph work, was 

equipped with a darkroom 

just behind the galley, 

to develop photos 

taken offshore. These 

were then sent by helicopter 

to the mainland. 

The Miss Freeport was 

later sold, and is now in 

Australia. When last 

heard of, the Captain Carl 

was in Kuwait, five other boats were sold to the 

Mexican government and went to Campeche, 

and two others were later converted to use as oil 

drilling standby boats. 

“They last forever when you take care of 

them,” Muchowich says. 

In 1954, the family’s small shrimp freezer was 

proving inadequate for the needs, and the family 

built a fish house on the Brazos River. This was a 

mammoth facility, capable of freezing 30,000 

pounds of shrimp in 12 hours, and holding up 

to 100,000 pounds in the storage room. 

PARTY BOAT BUSINESS 

The family also operated a party boat business 

that was so well known across the state that 

Dallas area newspaper readers referred to an 

outdoor editor’s page as “the Muchowich page.” 

One of the party boats was a 40-foot Dolphin 

built about 1933 in Biloxi, Mississippi. “This 

was a big super-dragger, powered with a 1919 

Pierce Arrow automobile engine,” Muchowich 

says. “When summer fishing parties were scheduled, 

we would nail two-by-four stanchions 

from the stern to midship, and close it off. 

Sometimes we closed it all the way to the bow. 

The big sport was kingfishing, but we also 

caught some snapper.” 

The fee for “stragglers,” or single passengers, 

was $3 each to fish, and another $1 to rent a rod 

and reel. The boats went to the close (east) 

banks, located about ten miles south of Freeport. 

A 1962 newspaper story outlining the family’s 

business history credits them for having “put 

Freeport on the map for fishermen” with both 

their shrimping and party boat operations. 


“We had the party boat business from 1932 

to 1974, when we sold the three boats and the 

business to one of the captains, Elliot Cundieff. 

OFFSHORE OIL SERVICES 

The next phase of the business was service to 

offshore wells, with the family leasing three seismograph 

boats to Shell Oil Company. Originally 

they worked from the shrimp and party boat 

docks in Freeport, but in the latter part of 1963, 

they were barred from loading and unloading 

explosives inside the Freeport city limits. 

“The party manager for Shell said if we would 

build a dock for them on the New River, which 

was outside the city limits, they would give us a 

six-month lease,” Muchowich says. 

Since that would pay for the construction, 

they built the creosote piling dock as a facility 

for three boats—a private dock for Shell Oil 

Company. As has been the pattern for the family’s 

business ventures, further expansion, 

including signing of a drilling mud company, 

soon followed. 

“My first rig to service was Brazos Oil and 

Gas. They operated for a month or six weeks 

and then sold the lease and platform to Shell. 

From then until they finished the well, I serviced 

Shell, and then other rigs as they came in, 

from then to now.” 

Offshore Oil Services, which has a 2,000-foot 

dock along the levee at the New River, acquired 

an 18.5-acre site on the Intracoastal Canal with 

750 feet of water frontage in 1987. Using existing 

staff, they turned the property into a serviceboat 

facility designed to provide rapid turnaround 

for maximum 

efficiency. It features a 

400 by 160-foot slip and 

five fueling stations, serviced 

by a 350,000-gallon 

fuel tank. Water, 

cranes to load equipment 

and piping, as well as the 

requisite drilling mud, 

are available on site. 

Since loading lines are 

underground, the dock 

area is left free to load 

cargo. Huge tires which 

had previously been 

used on a coal mine’s 

hopper cars are used as 

padding to protect both 

the boats and the concrete 

docks. 

“We now act as a consignee for three drilling 

mud companies,” Muchowich says. “We can 

serve 10-12 drilling rigs with no problem.” 

The company currently operates six boats, 

each named for a family member. The Joe M, a 

110-footer, was the first of five aluminum boats 

added to the company’s fleet. The largest of 

these, the Evelyn M, is 130 feet long and is 

powered by four 750-horsepower Caterpillar 

engines. It cruises at about 25 mph. 

Raymond Muchowich is owner and chairman 

of the board of Offshore Oil Services; his daughter, 

Marilyn Muchowich Stanley, joined the 

company in 1977 and serves as President. 

❖ 

Top, left: The Raymond M was one of 

three 165-foot boats built by a 

shipyard in Port Arthur during the 

first half of the 1960s and used as a 

seismograph boat in the early days of 

offshore oil and gas exploration. 


ANGLETON 

COCA-COLA 

BOTTLING 

COMPANY 

❖ 

Above: Angleton Coca-Cola Sales 

Center. 

Below: The 1915 trademark 

Coca-Cola bottle 

HOUSTON COCA-COLA 

BOTTLING COMPANY 

Established in 1902 

ANGLETON COCA-COLA 

BOTTLING COMPANY 

Established in the 1960’s 

The Houston Coca-Cola Bottling Company is 

an active, dedicated corporate citizen in the 

South Texas region. Coca-Cola is the world’s best 

known brand, yet bottling Coca-Cola always has 

been a local business. In 1902, Houston Coca- 

Cola Bottling Company was established by John 

T. Lupton, R.H. Williams, Frank A. Nelson, W.C. 

Shepherd and William L. Frierson. 

This small bottling operation came to 

Houston with three employees. Bottles were 

capped one at a time by use of “foot stomp” 

equipment, and deliveries were made from 

mule-drawn wagons that carried 60 cases of 24 

bottles each. In 1917, the first truck was purchased 

and the wagons were phased out. 

By 1929, new and larger facilities were needed 

to keep up with the increasing demand for 

Coca-Cola, and Houston Coca-Cola Bottling 

Company moved into a new plant where operations 

continued until 1950, when the company 

moved into “the world’s most modern bottling 

plant” – the Bissonnet facility where employees 

still work today. This facility still has three bottling 

lines, a premix/post mix line, and houses 

the company’s administrative offices. 

Eight sales and distribution warehouses, one 

of which is Angleton Coca-Cola Bottling 

Company, are strategically located around 

Houston. A canning facility in the Gulfgate area 

produces all the canned soft drink products on 

three can lines. Modern equipment today produces 

every 16 seconds the equivalent number 

of Cokes that it required one day to produce 

back in 1902. 

Houston Coca-Cola Bottling Company sold 

fruit flavored drinks under the name “Sprite” 

during the 1950s, and became the first bottler 

to market Sprite in 1961. Today, Sprite is the 

fastest growing carbonated soft drink beverage 

in the country. 

In the late 1970’s and early 1980’s, for economic 

reasons, bottling franchise ownership 

began to consolidate. The Coca-Cola Company 

advanced this consolidation in 1986 by merging 

some of its company-owned operations with 

two large ownership groups: the John T. Lupton 

franchise of Houston and BCI Holding 

Corporation’s bottling holdings. Subsequently, 

Houston Coca-Cola Bottling Company, including 

the Angleton sales and distribution facility, 

became a division of what is known now as 

Coca-Cola Enterprises Inc. 

Today, Angleton Coca-Cola Bottling 

Company’s employees, numbering more than 50 


area residents, recognize their leadership role in 

the industry and community. The bottler will 

continue the tradition of quality products, service 

and good corporate citizenship which has 

become synonymous with Angleton Coca-Cola 

Bottling Company. Everyone who is a part of 

Angleton Coca-Cola Bottling Company has a 

stake in the community’s strength and well 

being. Angleton Coca-Cola Bottling Company 

works closely with local retailers to make its 

products available throughout the community. 

The bottler buys from local suppliers. The 

employees are involved in schools, churches, 

youth organizations and civic associations. The 

employees believe that they have two main community 

responsibilities: to operate a successful 

local business that helps the local economy to 

prosper and to use the resources of money, time, 

ideas and product to make Brazoria County a 

better place to live. 

Although local activities touch the entire 

community, Angleton Coca-Cola Bottling 

Company places special emphasis on youth 

development and education initiatives. The bottler 

is engaged in the support of youth and education 

through the Coca-Cola Foundation and 

Coca-Cola Scholars Program, which has awarded 

hundreds of thousands of dollars in scholarship 

money to area youth. Locally, Angleton 

Coca-Cola aggressively seeks opportunities to 

make a difference in the communities it serves. 

Today we are proud to celebrate with the 

community the history of Brazoria County. 

Angleton Coca-Cola Bottling Company has 

served Brazoria County since the 1960’s and we 

look forward to providing our quality products 

to our customers for years to come. 

❖ 

Above: Images of these familiar frosty 

bottles of Coca-Cola have been 

familiar throughout the country for 

more than three-quarters of a century. 

Below: Using a slogan of “Work 

Refreshed,” Coca-Cola depicted the 

company’s valued customers with this 

advertisement in 1948. 


❖ 

INDUSTRIAL 

SPECIALISTS, 

INC. 

Above: Byron and Sandra Sadler. 

Bottom left: Scaffolding installed by 

Industrial Specialists, Inc. at Dow’s 

Oyster Creek plant. 

Bottom right: The company provides a 

wide variety of services, such as this 

insulation and fireproofing project at 

the Dow Oyster Creek plant. 

Industrial Specialists is a specialty contractor 

providing maintenance and new construction 

services for petrochemical, chemical and papermill 

industries along the Texas and Louisiana 

Gulf Coast region. Services provided include 

insulation, including customized removable 

covers; asbestos and lead abatement, scaffolding, 

fireproofing, refractory, roofing and siding, 

and general labor services. ISI has a core field 

staff of approximately 450 craftsmen with the 

capabilities of meeting rapidly changing manpower 

requirements, and the typical staffing 

level exceeds 650. ISI’s steadily increasing level 

of growth is a testament to its commitment to 

meeting or exceeding the needs of its customers. 

ISI is led by the husband-wife team of Byron 

and Sandra Sadler, who act as president and secretary-treasurer 

of the organization. The company, 

formed in 1976 from the Sadler home 

in Lake Jackson with an initial investment 

of $4,000 and a line of credit, grew to an operation 

exceeding $30 million in sales twenty 

years later. ISI was initially an insulation contractor 

providing services primarily in the Gulf 

Coast area. 

Scaffolding was the first field of expansion 

for ISI, allowing access to above-ground areas. 

This support craft eventually grew to meeting 

not only the needs of ISI’s insulation crews, but 

as a stand-alone craft offered to its customers 

and other contractors. The scaffolding department 

at ISI is recognized for the capability of the 

craftsmen to provide unique solutions to a customer’s 

access needs, as well as the ability to 

man large scaffolding projects. 

The influx of asbestos abatement legislation 

in the late 70’s led ISI to anticipate the rapidly 

approaching change in 

this field of insulation. 

ISI hired internal 

counsel, and began 

training its employees 

in the proper operating 

methods of dealing 

with the carcinogen 

and embraced the 

industry-wide movement 

for the abatement 

of asbestos-containing 

materials from 

industrial sites. To 

date, ISI has the exclusive asbestos abatement 

contract with Dow Chemical, Texas Division, as 

well as maintenance agreements with Phillips 

Petroleum Company, Reynolds Aluminum, 

BASF, Citgo Petroleum Corporation, and 

Donohue (Champion) Paper Mills. 

In addition to industrial services provided, 

ISI has met the expanding needs of its customers 

by providing enhanced project management 

services which allow for detailed cost 

accounting, timely and accurate project tracking 

and scheduling, as well as a comprehensive documentation 

package at the completion of the 

project, which provides the customer a historical 

perspective of work performed. 

ISI is committed to providing its customers 

the highest level of quality service in a safe and 

efficient manner. Safety is an intrinsic part of 

ISI’s operation, and this commitment to safety 


for both customers and employees is paramount. 

This commitment has led to ISI’s building 

a training facility adjacent to the corporate 

office in Richwood, Texas. This has allowed ISI 

to build a comprehensive safety program, which 

allows for both field and classroom training, 

and is supported by a staff of trained 

and knowledgeable safety professionals. The 

commitment to safety has led 

to recognition by both customers 

and notable organizations, 

such as the Houston 

Business Roundtable for 

ISI’s outstanding safety performance 

in the construction 

industry. 

The Sadlers recognize that 

a “company can be no better 

than its people,” and are 

committed to providing stable 

employment as well as 

educational opportunities 

that allow ISI’s people continued 

growth, benefiting both 

the organization and the individual. 

One area of strong 

commitment for ISI is the 

certification of craft skills, 

which is a nationwide program. 

ISI was instrumental in 

the development of craft curriculum 

at both the local and 

national level in the field of 

insulation. Implementing the 

craft certification program 

for all of its core 

employees, which utilizes 

the “Wheels of 

Learning” system of 

modulated classroom 

training and field skill 

assessment, is a longterm 

goal of ISI. 

Byron and Sandra 

serve in executive roles 

in the Southwest 

Insulation Contractors 

Association and the 

Associated Builders 

and Contractors, and 

are active in many 

other industry-related organizations. ISI is actively 

involved in community projects and supports 

various youth organizations. 

ISI is located at 5015 Highway 288-B, 

Richwood, Texas, 77531, and may be reached 

by telephone at 409-265-4709, or by fax at 

409-265-3325. Additional information may be 

found on the Internet at www.indspec.com. 

❖ 

Above: Taking a three-pronged 

approach to quality, Industrial 

Specialists officials have placed this 

slogan where it is visible to its 

employees every day. 

Below: Byron Sadler created the 

company’s logo, which appears on a 

three-dimensional sign in front of the 

company’s office. 


THE DOW 

CHEMICAL 

COMPANY, 

TEXAS 

OPERATIONS 

❖ 

Above: Thousands of lights give an 

indication of the size of Dow’s Texas 

Operations complex. 

Below: Night view of the Dow Texas 

Operations’ Light Hydrocarbon 8 

plant, one of the company’s major 

expansion projects during the 1990s. 

An abundance of natural resources in 

Brazoria County led The Dow Chemical 

Company here in 1940, during its search for a 

production facility site to use Dow’s newlydeveloped 

process of extracting magnesium 

from seawater. 

The southern part of the county offered the 

perfect combination: inexpensive natural gas, 

oyster beds, seawater, fresh water, salt domes, 

and good rail and water transportation. 

The company purchased 800 acres along the 

Gulf of Mexico and the Brazos River, and began 

construction of a petrochemical complex that 

has seen almost continuous expansion since the 

first portions of Plant B were built and the first 

ingot of magnesium was poured in 1941. 

In 1942, the company built Camp Chemical 

to house workers, and constructed the 42-bed 

Dow Hospital, and in 1943, the first resident 

moved into the all new town of Lake Jackson, 

designed by Alden B. Dow. 

After World War II ended, Dow paid $1.5 

million for government-owned facilities at Plant 

A; bought the company’s first tanker, Marine 

Chemist; shipped the first tank car of ammonia 

from the new ammonia plant; started up LHC 3 

and 4, Glycol 3, Chlorine 4, and Polyglycols; 

and completed polyethylene, glycerine and soda 

ash plants. 

In the 1950s, the Dow Hotel began serving 

food, and the Veazey Center, Dow Airport in 

Lake Jackson, and the A.P. Beutel Building were 

constructed. 

Dow donated its $1.2 million hospital and 

property to the community in the 1960s; started 

up the world’s first seawater conversion 

plant; established 30 technology centers worldwide, 

including seven in Texas; began the 

Oyster Creek site, with vinyl chloride and chlorine 

caustic as the first plants; and announced 

that Black Skimmer birds were nesting in the 

Plant A parking lot. 

The 1970s brought the beginning of plant 

tours; construction of the all Dow plastic 

Windecker plane and of the largest waste water 

treatment facility at Plant B; celebration of Dow’s 

75th anniversary; and beginning of the campaign, 

“Life is Fragile, Handle with Care.” In 


❖ 

The Dow Chemical Company’s Plant 

A is shown in the foreground, with the 

Oyster Creek site in the center and 

Plant B in the background. 

other highlights, Dow reached number one in 

earnings among chemical companies; the company 

sold its share of Dow-Badische to BASF; 

and construction of the Crude Oil Processing 

Plant at Oyster Creek neared completion. 

During the 1980s, Dow donated land for the 

new hospital site; added the Oyster Creek site to 

Texas Operations; started the redfish rearing 

pond; began production of CALIBRE© 

Polycarbonate; began the CAER program; 

opened the Truck Control Center; started up the 

Kiln; and Texas Operations received the first 

OSHA STAR safety award. 

Highlights of the 1990s have included celebration 

of the 50th anniversary of Texas 

Operations, and opening of both the new Waste 

Water Treatment Plant and Sea Center Texas. 

Major expansion projects during this decade 

have included Light Hydrocarbon 8, Power 8, 

and the Vinyl Plant. 

Freeport is the site for Texas Research and 

Development, a concentration of the company’s 

worldwide process research, and several of 

Dow’s Technical Service and Development laboratories. 

More than 800 researchers, chemists, 

scientists, engineers and technologists work 

here to develop new and improved products 

and processes. 

Texas Operations manufactures about half of 

the Dow products sold in this country, and a 

quarter of those sold worldwide. These products 

are primarily light hydrocarbon and chlorine 

derivatives, and include magnesium, styrene, 

plastics, adhesives, solvents, glycerine, glycol, 

chlorine, caustic and many more. 

Others become essential ingredients in products 

including automobiles, homes, computers, 

compact disks, medical supplies, pharmaceuticals, 

toothpaste, dog foods, water hoses, ice 

chests, milk cartons, garbage bags, shampoos, 

and furniture. 

The Texas Operations complex provides its 

own medical facility, fire department, security 

officers, telephone operations, utility services 

and waste disposal, and generates enough 

power to satisfy its own needs and help supply 

an outside utility system. Employees include 

chemists, engineers, office and service professionals, 

managers, technicians, craftspeople, 

operators and researchers. Contract workers are 

an important workplace resource. Texas 

Operations employees pool their individual 

resources to make up teams working to create 

the best processes and products. 

The original site at Freeport has expanded 

to three major complexes—Plant A, Plant B, 

and Oyster Creek—of more than 5,000 acres, 

to become one of the largest petrochemical 

complexes in the world and Dow’s largest manufacturing 

facility. 


TEXAS DOW 

EMPLOYEES 

CREDIT 

UNION 

❖ 

Left: John M. May, current TDECU 

President/CEO. 

Middle: W.A. “Shorty” Morgan, Jr., 

President/Manager 1972-1991. 

Right: Kara L. Cooper, 

President/Manager, 1955-1972. 

Since opening its doors for business in 1955, 

Texas Dow Employees Credit Union has had a 

strong commitment to its founding principle of 

“people helping people” by providing excellent 

financial services to its member/owners. This 

commitment continues today as TDECU has 

become the largest locally owned financial institution 

in Brazoria County, serving over 48,000 

member/owners. 

Solidly backed by more than $500 million in 

assets and a professional staff of employees and 

volunteers, TDECU’s continuing goal is to 

become its members’ “primary financial institution.” 

With prudent management, financial stability, 

member loyalty and innovative and 

affordable services, TDECU is achieving this 

goal and has attained an enviable position in the 

financial services industry as one of the nation’s 

100 largest credit unions. 

TDECU serves the employees of Dow 

Chemical Company—Texas Division and their 

subsidiaries operating in Texas. In addition, 

TDECU serves the employees of the following 

companies located in Brazoria County: BASF, 

Gulf Chemical & Metallurgical Corporation, 

Nalco Exxon Energy Chemicals LP, Roche 

Vitamins & Fine Chemicals, Rhodia, 

Schenectady International, Inc. and Shintech, 

Inc. Family members (spouses, children and 

parents) of TDECU members also qualify for 

membership. And once you are a member of 

TDECU, the credit union’s philosophy of “once 

a member, always a member” entitles you to 

remain a member. As long as a member’s 

account remains active and in good standing 

they will remain eligible for the services offered 

by TDECU, even upon retirement or completion 

of their employment from a sponsor company. 

Uniqueness is what makes TDECU stand out 

in the financial services industry. As a not-forprofit 

financial cooperative, owned and operated 

for the benefit of its members, TDECU 

returns all earnings (after meeting expenses and 

reserve requirements needed to ensure financial 

stability) to its members. For example, TDECU 

is able to offer its members higher dividends on 

deposit accounts and lower interest rates on 

loans. Earnings are also used to enhance the 

credit union’s product and service package. And 

because TDECU is not driven by profits, the 

credit union never looses sight of its number 

one priority—to offer the best possible member 

service and satisfaction. TDECU’s mix of traditional 

and innovative products and services 

includes Savings and Checking Accounts, IRAs, 

Certificates of Deposit, Consumer Loans, 

Mortgage and Home Equity Loans, Credit 

Cards, ATM Services and 24-hour Telephone 

Account Access and Loan Services. PC Home 

Banking will also be available in the near future. 

Together with its members, TDECU has 

come a long way since it was first chartered in 

December 1954. After one year of operation 

TDECU had 90 members and $61,000 in assets. 

The next 43 years saw incredible growth in 

members, assets and products and services. This 

growth is attributed to the vision and direction 

of the volunteer Board of Directors and the four 

executives who have led the credit union 

through its past and present. The executives 


include Kara L. Cooper, Ralph Mitchell, W.A. 

“Shorty” Morgan, Jr., and the current 

President/CEO, John M. May. From its humble 

beginnings in 1954, when its volunteer staff 

operated out of a file cabinet drawer at the 

Franklin Insurance Agency, TDECU now has a 

network of three offices in Lake Jackson, 

Angleton and Houston; ATMs located at each 

branch and throughout Brazoria County; and a 

staff of over 100 employees. 

TDECU’s dedication to its principle of “people 

helping people” is also reinforced by its 

commitment to the economic growth of surrounding 

communities. The credit union actively 

supports community organizations and projects. 

TDECU also supplies over 235,000 party 

paks to numerous non-profit organizations and 

awards six $1,000 scholarships annually to help 

deserving members further their education. 

Most notable, however, is TDECU’s commitment 

to its member/owners. By helping them 

meet their financial goals, TDECU remains truly 

committed to supporting the entire community. 

Further information about TDECU membership 

and its products and services may be 

obtained by contacting the credit union at (409) 

297-1154 or toll free (800) 839-1154, or by visiting 

their web site at www.tdecu.org. 

❖ 

Above: Members conducting their 

business during TDECU’s “You’re #1” 

Member Appreciation Campaign. 

Below: TDECU Board of Directors: 

(seated l-r) Tony Hlavaty, Phil 

Carlberg, Julie Bart, Simon Buras; 

(standing l-r) Robert Winters, Peggy 

Miltenberger, Jim Demland, Clarence 

Ebey and Dick Smith. 


BRAZOSPORT 

INDEPENDENT 

SCHOOL 

DISTRICT 

❖ 

Above: Brazoswood High School, 

built in 1969 

Below: R. O’Hara Lanier 

Middle School 

Some of the first schools in Texas operated in 

Quintana and Old Velasco in what is now the 

Brazosport Independent School District, 

though, in the earliest years, enrollment was 

limited to those children whose parents could 

afford to subsidize their education. 

Common school districts, with oversight by 

the county board, began operation in the 1880s. 

These primarily housed students in a single 

room, and more of these schools were available 

for black than for white students. By the 1890s, 

there were small schools serving all areas now 

encompassed by the Brazosport Independent 

School District. 

Early schools offered shorter terms and fewer 

subjects than are now available, and emphasized 

mastery of the “three R’s,” reading, writing and 

arithmetic. 

The Velasco ISD, established in 1892, was 

the oldest of the independent districts. The first 

school serving the new town of Freeport, which 

was founded in 1912, was operated by the 

county board, but the Freeport ISD was formed 

in 1917. A few years later, Clute and Velasco 

began paying tuition so their students could 

attend high school in Freeport. 

When Dow Chemical Company construction 

workers and employees began moving into the 

area in 1940, all of the area’s schools were inundated 

with new students. An extension of the 

Evergreen Common School District #14 was 

opened in Lake Jackson in 1943 for students living 

there, and Velasco built and operated a school 

at Camp Chemical, in efforts to meet the needs. 

Dow officials became concerned that, 

although their employees lived throughout the 

area, most of Dow’s property lay within the 

Velasco district, which would therefore benefit 

from most of the company’s taxes. Wanting to 

assure that educational benefits would be available 

to all the area’s students, Dow urged consolidation 

of the three districts. School trustees 

in all three areas concurred and called an election 

in 1944. An overwhelming number of voters 

favored the consolidation, which was the 

beginning of the independent school district for 

which the name “Brazosport” was chosen. 

Brazosport High School opened in 1951 in 

Freeport, with students from throughout the 

new district traveling there for the next 18 


years. In 1969, a second high school, 

Brazoswood, was opened in a location close to 

the homes of students living in Clute and Lake 

Jackson. 

Brazosport ISD has long been recognized for 

its high academic performance. Dr. Gerald 

Anderson, superintendent, says much of the 

credit goes to the district’s residents for having 

put their priorities in place and having very 

high expectations of student performance. This 

has kept the district in the academic forefront 

within the state. 

This claim is amply borne out in statistics 

reflecting student performance in state and 

national tests. BISD students consistently score 

above state average on the Texas Assessment of 

Academic Skills (TAAS), Scholastic Aptitude 

Test (SAT) and American College Test (ACT). A 

number of seventh graders have received state 

or national recognition for accomplishments in 

the Duke University Talent Identification 

Program, and numerous students from the district 

have been named as National Merit 

Scholarship Finalists. 

“We are very, very proud of the academic performance 

of our students in the areas of reading, 

writing and mathematical skills, due to the 

emphasis of teachers and principals on what is 

most important,” Dr. Anderson says. Recently 

the school district was notified that it has been 

chosen as a 1998 recipient of the Texas Quality 

Award. BISD is the first and only public school 

district in Texas to receive the prestigious award 

since its inception in 1994. This award is given 

to recognize Texas organizations that excel in 

quality management and achievement. 

The district’s participation in the Globe 

Scholars program encourages students to take 

more rigorous courses in high school. Another 

special program offered by the district is that of 

dual and concurrent enrollment with Brazosport 

College, in which 400 high school juniors and 

seniors are taking courses at the college and getting 

credit for them. In 1998, for the first time, 

BISD had a student who received 62 hours of 

college credit and was graduated from 

Brazosport College almost two weeks before he 

received his high school diploma from 

Brazosport High School. 

The district also cooperates in a joint Technical 

Preparation program with Brazosport College. 

Dr. Anderson cites taxpayer support as a 

major factor in the district’s educational success. 

“There is no question that we have had 

phenomenal support from our business and 

industrial community that pays 90 percent of 

the cost of educating the students,” he says. 

“They have given us the means to make 

Brazosport recognized as one of the top school 

districts in the state.” 

❖ 

Above: Brazosport High School, 

built in 1951 

Below: Madge Griffith 

Elementary School 


❖ 

GULF STATES, 

INC. 

Above: Originally formed as an 

electrical contractor for an area 

industry, Gulf States, Inc. is now 

heavily involved in the electrical 

instrumentation field. 

Below: In a project at the Fort 

Phantom Power Plant in Abilene, 

employees of Gulf States, Inc. use a 

winch truck to move a cable. 

The commitment to quality by management 

and employees of Gulf States, Inc. (GSI) has 

been a major factor in the company’s phenomenal 

growth since its organization in Lake 

Jackson in 1969. A “total concept contractor,” 

GSI provides everything from engineering to 

start-up, foundations to final turnover and 

ongoing maintenance to customers throughout 

the continental United States. 

“We are dedicated to providing our clients 

with products and services that meet or exceed 

their needs and expectations, and doing it in a 

timely and cost effective manner,” says Jim 

Linford, GSI president. “We will continue to 

improve our processes and provide our employees 

with the resources and training necessary to 

accomplish this in a safe, innovative and productive 

manner.” 

Rex Barnett and Franz June, both of whom 

are now retired from the company, were the only 

employees when they founded GSI as an electrical 

contractor to meet the growing needs of 

industrial construction and maintenance in the 

Gulf Coast area. 

At that time Dow Chemical Company had 

begun bidding out work to union and merit 

shop contractors. Rex and Franz formed GSI on 

the basis of submitting bids to Dow on a merit 

shop basis. Their success is a matter of record. 

The company grew rapidly, and its growth has 

continued through succeeding years. 

In the 1970s, the company developed instrumentation 

capabilities and acquired electrical 

testing capabilities. By this time GSI was already 

becoming known and highly regarded throughout 

the western part of the United States, as well 

as in Brazoria County and other Gulf Coast areas. 

From its original site in a Lake Jackson building, 

which is now home to a German restaurant, 

GSI moved to 4th and Cherry Streets in downtown 

Freeport, where it occupied an old build- 


ing that had previously been utilized for such 

varied purposes as school administration and as 

a dormitory for women in the Coast Guard during 

World War II. 

In 1979 Merit Constructors, Inc., a whollyowned 

subsidiary, was formed to provide 

mechanical construction and maintenance services. 

This company was merged with the parent 

company in 1982, to allow GSI to function as a 

general contractor while maintaining specialization 

in electrical and instrumentation work. 

Now licensed to operate in 44 states, GSI 

provides a multitude of general contracting services 

to the chemical, petrochemical, oil and 

gas/refining, mining and minerals, food processing, 

pulp and paper, pharmaceutical, heavy 

manufacturing, offshore, and power generation 

and distribution industries. 

Depending on the job involved, employees 

may work anywhere from four 10-hour days 

up to around-the-clock schedules, seven days 

a week. 

Construction and maintenance are the company’s 

real specialties, and the types of services 

offered to large industry cover a wide range. A 

merit shop contractor with no labor agreements, 

GSI has been a leader in the merit shop movement 

throughout the United States. The company 

is certified by the American Society of 

Mechanical Engineers, and has ranked in the 

upper quadrant of the Top 400 Contractors in 

the United States in annual surveys by 

Engineering News Record. 

GSI has always been a strong supporter of 

community activities and professional organizations, 

including Associated Builders and 

Contractors, Brazos Place, Junior Achievement, 

Rotary, and ACIT. 

The company’s corporate headquarters is 

located at 6711 East Highway 332 in Freeport, 

but it maintains several other permanent sites 

throughout the continental United States. Two 

of these are in Brazoria County—1027 Dixie 

Drive in Clute and the fabrication facilities at 

304 North Gulf Boulevard in Freeport. Other 

permanent GSI facilities are located in Mystic, 

Connecticut; Dalton, Georgia; Salt Lake City, 

Utah; and Pittsburg, California. 

Testronics, Inc., a wholly owned GSI subsidiary, 

has facilities at the corporate headquarters 

site in Freeport. 

The company takes special pride in its large 

core of key personnel with valuable longevity. 

Employee safety is a top priority, and GSI truly 

believes that its most important asset is its people. 

As a result of this doctrine, the company 

not only provides resources to make it possible 

for employees to operate at peak efficiency, but 

also offers a comprehensive program of training 

to ensure that GSI will continue to meet or 

exceed client needs and expectations in a safe, 

productive, and cost-effective manner. 

❖ 

Above: Now licensed to operate in 44 

states, Gulf States, Inc. is a leader in 

the merit shop movement throughout 

the country. 

Below: Gulf States, Inc. provides a 

multitude of general contracting 

services to industries ranging from 

chemical and petrochemical to oil and 

gas, food processing, and power 

generation. 


COLUMBIA- 

BRAZORIA 

INDEPENDENT 

SCHOOL 

DISTRICT 

❖ 

Above: “Roughneck Country” sign is 

placed in foreground of a cluster of 

school buildings, including the high 

school. 

Below: This West Columbia school 

bus, c. 1928-30, was the second in 

the state. 

Columbia-Brazoria Independent School 

District combines the best of two worlds—a 

friendly, small-town feeling and the convenience 

of the cultural events, sports and services available 

in urban living. 

Comprised of the cities of West Columbia 

and Brazoria, along with a number of smaller 

communities such as Wild Peach, between the 

Brazos and San Bernard rivers, the district 

encompasses 225 square miles. Nearly 75 percent 

of the students travel to school on buses 

that cover about 1,400 miles daily. 

The area combines country living, hometown 

friendliness, and a safe, 

clean environment. Two 

country clubs offer golf, 

tennis and swimming, 

along with special 

events and conference 

facilities. Rich in Texas 

history, the district 

includes the 66-acre 

Varner-Hogg State Park. 

It is just 60 miles south 

of Houston, and has 

easy access to cultural 

activities such as museums, 

opera and ballet, 

theaters and orchestras. 

Education here dates to the beginning of 

Texas’ Anglo settlement. In the first half of the 

19th century, private schools operated in 

Brazoria and Columbia. Brazoria’s first public 

school was in a two-story wooden building, 

which was destroyed by the 1900 storm. Classes 

were then held in the former courthouse until a 

two-story brick school was constructed. 

Declared unsafe after the 1932 storm, it was 

replaced by a new school. 

In the early 1900s, the Varner Creek and 

Rhodes schools were operated in the Columbia 

area. A small one-story school on Broad Street 

may have been the first school building in West 

Columbia, followed by a two-story frame building 

on Bernard Street. In the latter part of the 

1920s or early 1930s, the East and West 

Columbia schools consolidated. 

The Charlie Brown School, originally operated 

for black students, was named for the property’s 

donor, a remarkable man who had been 

born a slave in Virginia in 1828, came to 

Brazoria County about the end of the Civil War, 

and died a millionaire at age 92. 

A move toward consolidation of the Columbia 

and Brazoria districts was spurred in 1959 by the 

need for additional facilities for increasing enrollment. 

The consolidation was approved by a 

heavy margin in both areas—559-13 in West 


Columbia, and 568-59 in Brazoria. Five months 

later, voters approved $1.67 million in bonds to 

build new junior and senior high school facilities, 

and since 1966 have approved more than $10 

million in school bonds. 

Some 75 percent of the $18.2 million annual 

budget is directly related to salaries and benefits. 

The district employs 239 teaching staff 

members on eight campuses; 68 aide/secretarial, 

41 food service, 40 maintenance, warehouse, 

and custodial, and 50 transportation workers. 

The Texas Education Agency has recognized 

the Columbia-Brazoria Independent School 

District for academic performance, attendance, 

and low dropout rate, and has honored campuses 

individually. 

Columbia High School has received state 

recognition for College Entrance Exams, 1997 

Texas Assessment of Academia Skills test scores 

that were the highest in Brazoria County, and 

state-level Academic Decathlon and National 

Merit achievement. 

Services offered by the district include special 

education programs for students ages 3-21 who 

may be learning disabled or otherwise disabled; 

enrichment and special instruction for intellectually 

gifted students; career and technology education 

programs; and tech prep planning with 

Wharton County Junior College and Brazosport 

College in the fields of business education, engineering, 

agriculture and drafting. 

Extracurricular activities include University 

Interscholastic League Class 4A programs in 

academic areas, band, choir, theater arts, drill 

team and athletics. 

“Our district is dedicated to the belief that all 

students can learn and that it is the task of the 

school to provide the time and support to ensure 

this occurs,” says Acting Superintendent Carol 

Bertholf. “High expectation for student success 

on the part of staff, students and parents is an 

inherent part of this belief. All students have 

unique mental, emotional, social and physical 

needs. Meeting these needs requires the combined 

efforts of students, teachers, administrators, 

parents and other community members.” 

❖ 

Above: Shown as it appeared in 1920, 

this West Columbia school burned in 

the 1940s. 

Below: Charlie Brown High School in 

West Columbia, shown in 1948, was 

named for one of the district’s major 

benefactors. 


RICETEC, INC. 

As the cultivation of rice moves 

into the 21st century, technology will 

combine with ingenuity to address 

the needs of the future. Less land will 

yield more rice. Resistance to disease 

and tolerance of harsh growing conditions 

will be heightened. Farmers 

will have more options regarding the 

characteristics and quality of their 

harvests. Processing will become 

more efficient. Brand identity will be 

easier to establish and preserve. The 

entire process—from seed to shelf— 

will be advanced. 

The RiceTec Group is dedicated 

to occupying the forefront of this 

movement. Currently comprising 

three distinct companies—RiceTec AG (Vaduz, 

Liechtenstein), RiceTec, Inc. (Alvin, Texas) and 

RiceSelect Ltd. (London, England)—the Group 

has an understanding of what the future 

requires, a global perspective on the direction 

of the rice industry, and the creativity and 

depth of resources that innovation demands. 

The primary goal: to develop and commercialize 

hybrid rice seed for mechanized farming on 

an international basis. 

Drawing on over three decades of experience, 

RiceTec combines unique skills in rice farming, 

plant breeding, and consumer sales. The Group 

owns and operates a 500-acre research farm, test 

laboratory, seed processing plant, specialty rice 

mill and packaging plant in Texas, as well as a 

150-acre rice breeding station in Puerto Rico. 

RiceTec also manages an extensive network of 

seed-rice test locations in the United States and 

Central and South America, and anticipates 

establishing further research facilities and seed 

companies in other countries. 

The entire RiceTec organization—from 

owner to rice breeders to marketing and 

management teams—demonstrates a level of 

technological expertise and strategic prowess 

that meets the highest standards in the rice 

industry. The Group’s vision is to establish 

RiceTec as the leader in developing, producing 

and marketing hybrid rice seed and specialty 

rice products worldwide. 

First developed in the People’s Republic of 

China during the 1970s, hybrid rice has 

increased yields in this massive traditional 

market by 20 percent over native rice varieties, 

and today hybrids account for over 50 percent 

of the 75 million acres of rice grown in China. 

RiceTec’s breeding program is designed to 

upgrade Chinese advances to meet stringent 

U.S. quality standards and adapt hybrid parent 

lines for mechanized farming. These improvements 

are critical to maximizing the potential 

and marketability of hybrid rice in areas outside 

China. 

Breeding hybrid rice represents only one part 

of RiceTec’s dynamic program. What distin- 


guishes RiceTec’s efforts is the Group’s ability to 

understand and often anticipate market requirements 

while simultaneously creating new 

opportunities for all segments of the industry. 

Breeders and agronomists in the field and scientists 

in the Applications and Product 

Development Group work cooperatively to 

develop each new rice product. RiceTec’s fully 

integrated operations—including a commercial 

rice mill and branded specialty rice business in 

the U.S.—provides the staff with firsthand 

knowledge of customer needs, as well as the 

resources to conduct comprehensive testing 

programs aimed at delivering market results. 

Breeding and production efforts are supported 

by onsite laboratory facilities that include 

state-of-the-art measurement equipment 

employed in uncovering the relationship 

between the properties of rice grain itself and the 

processing and cooking behavior of that grain. 

And the consumer lab administers the ultimate 

test: taste, texture, aroma, and appearance. 

On the farming side, RiceTec’s breeders and 

crop production specialists work hand-in-hand 

with rice growers on large-scale farm trials that 

precede the commercialization of any new specialty 

rice variety or hybrid. Vital information 

on the most beneficial crop management and 

post-harvest practices for each line is developed 

by the agronomic support team and relayed 

directly to the farmers. 

Hybrid seed quality is further assured by ongoing 

inspections of contract seed producers’ 

fields throughout the growing season and rigorous 

post-harvest testing for seed purity, germination, 

and seedling vigor. 

While RiceTec has made impressive strides 

in developing hybrid rice for mechanized farming, 

its long-term vision is committed to 

expanding the universe of knowledge about rice 

and rice breeding. 

RiceTec’s global network serves as a foundation 

for the next generation of hybrid rice technology. 

Its worldwide research initiatives and 

participation in all sectors of the industry constitute 

a unique, integrated approach to 

agribusiness. The Group’s international links 

and comprehensive industry experience enable 

RiceTec to direct its capabilities, investments, 

and innovations toward meeting the challenges 

of the future. 


BRAZORIA 

COUNTY 

ABSTRACT 

COMPANY 

❖ 

Top: The Brazoria County Abstract 

Company was founded in 1873, and 

moved from Brazoria to Angleton 

after the county seat was moved in 

1896. 

Bottom: Present Headquarters of the 

Brazoria County Abstract Company. 

The Brazoria County Abstract 

Company was founded in 1873 as 

Shapard, Stevens & Company by J.H. 

Shapard, who had been active in real 

estate for several years, and Hennell 

Stevens, the county surveyor. 

The first office was located above a 

drug store owned by Stevens in Brazoria, 

which was then the county seat. 

The new firm engaged in all aspects of 

real estate, including preparation of 

abstracts of title, and gradually began to 

accumulate the records which are the basis 

of an abstract plant. In 1890, the firm was 

incorporated under the name “Brazoria 

County Abstract Company.” 

About 1890, during the Velasco boom, the 

company opened a branch office there, operated 

by Stevens’ son, Frank W., who had been associated 

with the company since shortly after it 

was founded. 

The county seat of Brazoria County was 

moved from Brazoria to Angleton in 1896, 

about the time the Velasco boom ended. Frank 

W. Stevens became president of the company, 

and moved its office to Angleton, where he had 

a wood frame office building constructed in the 

100 block of East Magnolia Street. 

He had acquired the Shapard interest, and 

continued to manage the company until his death 

in 1928. At that time his son, Frank K. Stevens, 

who had been associated with the company since 

1901, became its president and manager. 

In 1948, the old wooden abstract company 

office was temporarily moved farther down the 

block so it could be used during construction of 

a new building located on the company’s original 

Angleton site, around the old, reinforced 

concrete vaults. 

Frank K. Stevens retired as the company’s 

president in 1966, and was succeeded by his son, 

Frank W., who had practiced law in Angleton 

since the end of World War II. Frank W. had 

served as the company’s examining attorney since 

1946, when it began writing title insurance as an 

agent for Stewart Title Guaranty Company. 

His son, James W. Stevens, the fifth generation 

of the family to serve as president of the 

company, held that post for ten years before 

returning to the full-time practice of law as a 

partner in the firm of Stevens & Rau in 1993. 

He was succeeded by Melba Beken, the first 

woman and the first non-Stevens family member 

to head the company. Beken, who joined the 

company in 1983, had previously served as its 

executive vice president. 

While emphasizing expansion of the company’s 

market share of the abstract business, Beken 

has focused on increasing staff involvement, a 

team-building approach to management, and a 

concern for personal and job-related development 

of staff members. 

Land records are the heart and soul of the 

abstract business, and the Brazoria County 

Abstract Company has records dating back to 

original Spanish land grants to Brazoria County 

pioneers, both in the original Spanish and in 

translation. Such records are essential in land 

transfers, to assure that the purchaser obtains 

clear title to the property. 


Because county land records are filed by the 

name of the owner of each tract, private companies 

were established to maintain an index 

based on property location, including information 

about all transfers that have occurred on 

that property in the past. 

About 35,000-40,000 pieces of information 

are filed annually by the county clerk, with two 

or three pieces of paper involved in each. This 

translates to a huge need for abstract and title 

insurance firms’ services. 

In 1994, the Brazoria County Abstract 

Company moved to larger quarters to provide 

the space needed for its 33 employees and consistent 

growth of its business. 

In 1997, Stewart Information Services 

Corporation acquired the company as part of its 

strategy for growth throughout the Houston 

metropolitan area. The company has been a 

Stewart agent since 1946. 

While proud of its history, company officials 

emphasize one of its slogans: “We’re not the best 

because we’re oldest—we’re the oldest because 

we’re the best.” 

Brazoria County Abstract Company’s main 

office is located at 2513 North Velasco Street, 

Angleton; telephone: 409-849-6453; fax: 

409-849-1827; e-mail: melba@geosysinc.com. 

Other offices are: Lake Jackson, 202 This Way; 

phone: 409-297-6426; fax: 409-297-9555; 

e-mail: betty@geosysinc.com; and Alvin, 

1232 FM 1462; phone: 281-331-5262; fax: 

281-331-9383. 

A Pearland office is scheduled to open soon. 

❖ 

Above: Melba Beken is congratulated 

by James W. Stevens (left), and 

Malcolm S. Morris, president of 

Stewart Title Guaranty (right) on 

being named as president of the 

Brazoria County Abstract Company 

on July 1, 1993. 

Below: Technology has changed 

drastically in the company’s 125-year 

history. 


PORT FREEPORT 

❖ 

Above: A container ship utilizes Port 

Freeport’s new mobile harbor crane. 

Opposite, top: Early 1950s aerial 

photo of the construction of Port 

Freeport’s Berth 2. 

Opposite, bottom: A recent aerial view 

of the facilities of Port Freeport. 

COLOR PHOTOS COPYRIGHT Image Aerial Photography 

From the days of Stephen F. Austin’s first settlement 

in Texas, port facilities have been recognized 

as one of Brazoria County’s most vital 

resources. In his vision of the potential for a 

deepwater port, Austin anticipated a day when 

ships from all over the world would dock at the 

mouth of the Brazos River to exchange foreign 

goods for the products of area plantations. 

Those dreams have been fulfilled today, 

through the development of Port Freeport, though 

certainly Austin could not have envisioned the size 

of the ships that dock here, the types and volume 

of the cargoes they carry, or the manner in which 

their freight is loaded and unloaded. 

Access to the Gulf of Mexico has been vital 

throughout the area’s history, from the Battle of 

Velasco through the days of the Republic of 

Texas, when Velasco was the main port for the 

Texas Navy. Its importance was again evident 

during the Civil War, when blockade runners 

sheltered at the mouth of the Brazos, slipping out 

into the Gulf with loads of cotton and returning 

with supplies badly needed by both the 

Confederate troops and the civilian population. 

The economic worth of the port has been 

inestimable, from the days when the chief 

exports were cotton and “hogsheads” of sugar to 

today’s outgoing cargoes of petrochemicals. 

The greatest asset has always been the unrestricted 

access to deepwater, and the greatest 

problem, the silting from the Brazos. Early visitors 

and residents who arrived via ship almost 

all wrote in letters or journals about the sand 

bar at the river’s mouth. The problem was so 

severe that for a time no insurance could be purchased 

for a ship or cargo coming into Velasco. 

Although efforts to eliminate the silting have 

continued over a period of more than 150 years 

and have involved everyone from private developers 

to state and federal government, the effects 

of most such projects until the second quarter of 

the 20th century were temporary at best. 

Among the most important of the early efforts 

were the dredging of a 40-mile long canal 

between the Brazos River and Galveston in 1854, 

allowing stern-wheel steamboats to make regular 

trips upstream to Columbia, and two jetty-building 

projects at the mouth of the river in 1872 

and 1888. Expenditures for the earlier jetties 

totaled $142,098 but brought little progress. The 

effort by the Brazos Channel and Dock Company 

cost $1,449,025 and resulted in huge, graniteblock 

jetties extending 5,000 feet. 

The canal, a forerunner of a portion of today’s 

Intracoastal Canal, was dredged by the 

Galveston and Brazos Navigation Company in 

1854, and purchased by the federal government 

in 1903 for $30,000. 

The discovery of huge deposits of sulfur at 

Bryan Mound brought major interest in port 

development in 1910. At the request of Texas 

Governor O.B. Colquitt, the facility was to operate 

as a “free port,” with no dock or wharf charges, 

and this led to the name of Freeport being chosen 

for both the city and the sulfur company. 

Again, however, silting was a major detriment 

to use of the port, and the benefits of 

dredging were quickly eliminated by the effects 

of storms and floods. 

In 1924, the U.S. Corps of Engineers proposed 

several possibilities to remedy the problem. 

Local leaders chose one of the most ambitious, 

diversion of the river’s channel. The federal 

government agreed to fund $500,000 of the 

cost, and voters of the newly created Brazos 

River Harbor Navigation District agreed to 

underwrite the other $1 million. 

While this project solved the most acute silting 

problems, its completion in 1936 came only 

a few years before local sulfur mining declined. 

Not until Dow Chemical Company’s arrival in 


Freeport in 1940 did the shipping totals begin 

to climb again. An additional boost came with 

the World War II opening of a government aviation 

fuel operation that in 1947 would become 

the site of the Phillips Petroleum Company’s 

plant in Sweeny. 

In terms of cost, the most ambitious 

improvement project in the Port’s history was 

approved in 1986, after a 24-year effort by the 

Navigation District’s commissioners. It provided 

for channel widening to 400 feet, dredging to a 

depth of 45 feet, and the addition of a 1,200 

foot turning basin at a cost of $90 million. 

The District’s Strategic Master Plan, adopted in 

1995, is being implemented systematically, resulting 

in such improvements as the construction of 

new container yards, warehouses and transloading 

facilities; modification of transit sheds to 

accommodate various cargoes and equipment; the 

purchase of a new container crane; and extension 

of Dock A to relieve congestion. 

Overall growth in cargoes and revenues continues. 

The primary increase has been in 

import/export cargoes, addition of steamship 

lines and shippers as new customers, as well as 

the accommodation of semi-submersible operations 

in the Port’s deep berthing area. In the 

decade from 1988 to 1997, Port Freeport saw its 

annual tonnage increase 

by some seventy percent. 

In 1997, the Port set a 

record for the number of 

containers it handled, 

46,197 twenty-foot equivalent 

units, which made 

Port Freeport the second 

busiest container facility 

in Texas. 

Since becoming Foreign 

Trade Zone No. 149 in 

1988, Port Freeport has 

been a valuable support tool 

to local industry. Through 

its heightened marketing 

effort, further growth in the 

FTZ is anticipated in the 

years to come. 

“We are well positioned 

to take full advantage of 

the opportunities the new 

century presents us,” says 

A.J. Reixach Jr., executive port director. “The 

completion of the 45-Foot Project, combined 

with the widening and deepening of the Panama 

Canal by the year 2015, establishes our course for 

taking advantage of the newer, larger ship traffic, 

especially for the local private terminals.” 


YELLOW 

JACKET 

CONSTRUCTION 

❖ 

Above: Mr. & Mrs. Curtis Payne. 

In 1972, Curtis Payne started out with himself 

as the only employee, one rubber-tire backhoe, 

and a lot of energy to form Yellow Jacket 

Construction. Payne’s one-time small business 

has grown over the past 26 years into a company 

with approximately $4 million in equipment, 

40 permanent employees, and as many as 350 

workers at peak times. Yellow Jacket, a company 

that was only one man, now has an annual 

payroll of about $5 million and annual revenues 

of approximately $15 million. 

Primarily a pipeline contractor whose customers 

include major pipeline companies, Payne 

has laid lines from New Mexico to Virginia, and 

as far north as Kansas. Yellow Jacket is probably 

best known for reconditioning old pipelines, and 

has completed projects from Sweeny to Odessa, 

Jones Creek to Cushing, Oklahoma, Odessa to 

Borger, and Mont Belview to Chapel Hill, North 

Carolina. However, the company also does about 

$2 million per year in directional drilling for river 

crossings, as well as having a division for maintaining 

and servicing pipelines, including valves, 

painting fences, and mowing rights-of-way. 

Yellow Jacket’s services also include building 

facilities related to pipelines, such as compressor 

stations, pump stations, and metering stations. 

“The one project that really got us on our feet 

was a line from Phillips’ Sweeny refinery to West 

Texas,” Payne says. “We had one back-hoe when 

we started it, and when we finished we had over 

200 employees working on the job.” 

Curtis, who grew up in Alvin, came into the 

construction business naturally. His father, a 

welder by trade, had been introduced through 

that craft to the pipeline business. Being somewhat 

of an entrepreneur himself, he started his 

own company, Payne Construction, in 1952, but 

sold out in 1970. It was two years later in 1972 

that Curtis formed Yellow Jacket Construction. 

His father, Roy Payne, went into partnership 

with Curtis in 1976, then later retired in 1980. 

Another of Curtis’ natural connections was his 

father-in-law, R. C. Goodridge, whom he 

worked for and with for many years. 

Curtis and his wife, Darlene, have been married 

for 35 years, and have watched Yellow 

Jacket both struggle and grow together. Three of 

their five children now also work for the family 

business: Roy, a foreman in the field; Linda, 

Right: Installation of 30-inch 

directional drill, Savannah, Georgia, 

by Yellow Jacket Construction. 

This was the world record drill of 

5,400 feet. 


office manager; and Denise, safety coordinator. 

Julie and Ryan, the youngest of the five, are still 

in college. 

Payne says those who have been most instrumental 

in the company’s growth have been 

his father, Roy, and his father-in-law, 

R. C. Goodridge. 

They are about the same age, and came up at 

about the same time, with the same values,” he 

says. “I came in and had a lot of energy, and they 

gave us direction and saved us from a lot of mistakes. 

They were our tutors, our mentors. They 

guided us through the formative years. I learned 

the work from my dad, and my father-in-law 

taught me the administrative things.” 

Due to the growth and productivity, like 

many other firms, Yellow Jacket now relies 

ever more heavily on the computer and the 

Internet. Payne and his administration have 

found that estimating, accounting, and administrative 

work can all be accomplished more efficiently 

on the computer. 

“This is snowballing,” Payne says. “It’s getting 

bigger and we’re depending on it more and 

more. We started estimating on computer only 

about a year ago. We were a company that typically 

did $3.5 to $4 million in business for 20 

years, but the last four or five years, business 

has started to explode.” 

Curtis admits this is primarily due to his own 

increased concentration. He had previously 

spent some of his time on other interests, including 

his son Roy’s auto racing career. Payne says 

now they are both concentrating on business, 

and their efforts are getting positive results. 

“The industry has taken off in the last four to 

five years, which is something I never expected 

after the oil crunch,” Payne says. “I am not sure 

that business now is not better than it was in the 

late ‘70s, before the crunch.” 

Yellow Jacket’s corporate headquarters 

are located in Alvin, with other offices in 

Zapata, Texas, and Cushing, Oklahoma. The 

main office is at 10815 FM 1462, Alvin; 

telephone 281-331-4858; fax 281-331-5928. 

❖ 

Above: Welding on 20-inch Longhorn 

Partners project. 

Below: Installation of 6-inch Phillips 

pipeline on Exxon corridor. 


U.S. CONTRACTORS, 

INC. 

❖ 

Top to bottom: 

Billy McIntyre, owner, (left) 

and Brad McIntyre, estimating. 

Lynn Monical, owner (seated); Benny 

Dunn, executive manager, Brazos M&E; 

and Mark Monical, executive manager, 

maintenance. 

Bobby Monical, owner (seated); 

Kevin Barnes, drafting; Sissy Barnes, 

estimating secretary; and Johnny 

Monical, assistant project coordinator. 

Tammi Blevins, accounting manager 

(seated); Buck Blevins, lump sum 

superintendent; Rod Daigle, manager, 

business development; Harold Monical 

Jr., executive general manager, UE & I; 

Harold Monical, owner. 

U.S. Contractors, Inc. (USC) has been a family 

owned and operated business since its inception. 

It was founded by H. H. Monical, L. L. 

Monical and J. C. Powell in 1947. It began as a 

small construction company in Lake Jackson, 

Texas, then called Monical & Powell, Inc., utilizing 

the abilities of the owners, who were carpenters 

by trade. E. C. Rea later became an 

owner of the company. 

Monical & Powell grew from a small commercial 

construction company to an industrial 

construction company that employed over 

1,000 people. Monical & Powell’s entry into the 

petrochemical construction field, having begun 

to serve some of the large chemical plants as 

both capital construction and maintenance contractors, 

had accelerated the growth. 

During the 1970’s the company began a 

change in direction by entering the Merit Shop 

arena. The home office in Lake Jackson was 

moved to a 22-acre tract in Clute, Texas, and 

U.S. Contractors, Inc. was established. Since 

that time, branch offices have been established 

in La Porte and Port Lavaca, Texas, and Baton 

Rouge, Louisiana. The company has done work 

throughout the Southwest and East Coast. 

Together with United Electrical & 

Instrumentation, founded in 1980 by USC owners 

to provide electrical and instrumentation 

services, and Brazos M & E, Inc., purchased by 

USC owners in 1986 to add site development 

and civil capabilities, the companies offer a 

turnkey package under a single umbrella, and 

can handle all facets of a job with one invoice. 

Facilities include one of the largest fabrication 

shops and the largest sheet metal shop in 

the Gulf Coast area. Other services include the 

installation and maintenance of fire protection 

systems and environmental remediation, including 

installation of geomembrane linings. 

The company has continued to be a family 

owned and directed business. USC’s scope and 

size has grown but the goal has remained the 

same. The company now includes a number of 

family members who take roles of leadership in 

all areas of the company. As said by the owners, 

“This is a family-owned business, which makes 

it unique. The difference between our company 

and others is the personal involvement. The 

owners are actively involved in the day-to-day 

operation. We make a point to meet with our 


customer representatives on a regular basis. In 

a world that today seems to be managed from 

a distance, it is our opinion everyone wants 

the personal attention deserved and offered by 

USC. We have had the opportunity to serve 

some of the finest companies in the petrochemical 

world, and are committed to offering 

this same personal touch to our ever-expanding 

customer base.” The principal owners are 

H. E. Monical, L. D. Monical, R .E. Monical and 

W. E. McIntyre. 

Appreciation for this concept is apparent, not 

only by the company’s dramatic growth, but also 

by its selection as a finalist for the Texas Family 

Business of the Year Award in 1997. 

With 3,500 employees, USC is the second 

largest employer in Brazoria County, supplying 

jobs from laborers through craftsmen. 

USC supports the United Way, Brazosport 

Cancer Center, Brazos Place, Project Graduation 

for several high schools, youth groups such as 

Little Leagues, soccer teams, etc., through sponsorships 

and donations. USC works closely with 

Associated Builders & Contractors and 

Brazosport College in skills training, the 

apprenticeship program and safety. 

In 1992, the company began developing and 

implementing a formal craft skills recognition 

program to meet the OSHA Standard for 

Process Safety Management. Its process has 

served as a model for the Brazoria County 

Petrochemical Council, and is being reviewed 

by the National Center for Construction 

Education and Research Foundation, to become 

part of a nationalized craft training program. 

USC has been a leader in this area and continuously 

strives to improve the process. 

As members of the Association of Chemical 

Industry of Texas, USC works to enhance 

the economic health of the Texas chemical 

industry and related businesses. USC was 

named Supplier of the Year in its region by 

ACIT in 1995. 

A $125,000 contribution by USC was made 

in 1994 to the Construction Education 

Foundation of Washington, D.C., to help create 

a National Center for Construction Education 

and Research. 

The owners believe “the construction industry 

is a service business—people are our primary 

asset. We consider this an investment in 

the future of our people, our company, and 

our industry.” 

The USC claim of “quality with integrity” 

is exactly what it means. USC is friends with 

its employees, customers and the community. 

The company is located at 622 Commerce in 

Clute; telephone 409-265-7451, 281-393-1121, 

or 1-800-897-9882. 

❖ 

Above: This tower, installed by U.S. 

Contractors, Inc., at The Dow Chemical 

Company Texas Operations’ Oyster 

Creek site, was featured as the cover 

picture for Volume 6, No. 1, USC Today, 

which marked USC’s 50th anniversary. 


RON CARTER 

AUTOMOTIVE 

CENTER 

❖ 

Ron Slank, owner of Ron Carter 

Automotive Center. 

When Ron Slank began work 

for Chevrolet Motor Division, as a 

marketing analyst in 1973, it 

marked the beginning of an association 

with the automobile industry 

that would lead to his consistent 

ranking as one of the Top 10 

automotive retailers in Texas. 

A native of Detroit, Michigan, 

Slank received his BA degree from 

the Michigan State University in 

1971, and worked for Campbell- 

Ewald, Chevrolet’s National 

Advertising Agency, while working 

toward his MBA, which he 

received in 1976 from the 

University of Detroit. 

He was transferred by the 

agency to Dallas as regional 

account executive, and in 1978 

began working in a retail training 

program for Charles Carter, a 

Chevrolet dealer in McKinney, 

Texas, for two years, in the hope of 

becoming an auto dealer. 

In 1980, Slank obtained his first dealership, 

Ron Carter Chevrolet in Pearland, with facilities 

that were humble by today’s standards. This 

dealership was just the first step in what would 

become an automotive empire. In 1986, Charles 

Carter and Ron Slank, operating as Ron Carter 

Ford, Inc., purchased Alvin Ford. A new facility 

constructed in 1990 houses sales and service 

operations for Ford, Toyota, Chrysler-Plymouth, 

Jeep and Hummer, for the corporation known as 

Ron Carter Ford, Inc. 

Ron Carter Autoland, Inc., a Texas corporation 

purchased from Al Welling in 1986, 

brought sales and service operations for the 

General Motors product lines of Pontiac, GMC, 

Buick and Cadillac into the business. In 1988, 

Pearson Chevrolet-Oldsmobile was purchased. 

A new facility built adjacent to Ron Carter Ford 

in 1994 consolidated the operation of the GM 

portion of the business, which includes 

Chevrolet, Cadillac, Oldsmobile, Buick, Pontiac, 

and GMC. 

Slank and Carter together purchased Alvin 

Ford-Toyota-Jeep-Eagle and Al Welling Motor 

Company in 1986, and Mainland Chevrolet- 

Oldsmobile-Toyota in Texas City in 1988, 

thus becoming owners of four dealerships 

in four separate locations within a close geographical 

area. 

They sold the metro Chevrolet store in 

Pearland in 1992, and in 1995 completed the sale 

of Mainland Chevrolet-Oldsmobile-Toyota in 

Texas City. In 1996, Slank purchased Carter’s 

stock to become 100 percent owner, dealer operator, 

and chief executive officer of the companies. 

Slank recalls with respect some of the earliest 

of the automobile dealers in the area. These 

include Bud Brown and Carl Ellis, previous 

owners of the Ford dealership in Alvin; Al 

Welling, who owned Al Welling Motor 

Company; George Pearson, the Alvin Chevrolet- 

Oldsmobile dealer, who Slank says may have 

been the first car dealer in Brazoria County; and 

Raymond Kliesing of Pearland, another of the 

earliest General Motors dealers in Texas. 

Ron Carter Automotive Center currently 

employs over 250 persons, including all factorycertified 

technicians, and generates more than 

$175 million in annual sales. In addition to the 

new car dealerships, Ron Carter offers a wide 

selection of manufacturers’ used cars; Toyota, 

GM (AC-Delco), Ford (Motorcraft), and 


Chrysler (Mopar parts) and houses a certified 

pro-shop collision repair center for most major 

automotive insurance carriers to give one-stop 

convenience to customers. 

A new state-of-the-art building to house a 

service and collision repair center is scheduled 

for construction at Ron Carter Automotive 

Center’s 25-acre site. 

Famed baseball pitcher Nolan Ryan, an Alvin 

native, is in his second year as the official 

spokesman for the dealerships, and Gulf Coast 

residents have become familiar with the company’s 

slogan: “Ron Carter Automotive Center and 

Nolan Ryan – Nowhere but Alvin.” 

The Ron Carter Automotive Center in Alvin 

has been involved in numerous civic organizations 

and charitable organizations in Brazoria 

County since 1980. Slank is active in the Texas 

Automobile Dealers Association, which represents 

about 1,200 franchised new car and truck 

dealers throughout the state. He currently serves 

as a director of that organization, representing 

automobile dealers from southern Texas during 

his current three-year term. 

❖ 

Ron Carter Automotive Center. 


BRAZOSPORT 

COLLEGE 

❖ 

PHOTOS COURTESY OF GEORGE CRAIG PHOTOGRAPHY 

The formation of the Brazosport College 

District dates back to 1948. At that time voters 

in the Brazosport Independent School District 

created the college district, but a tax to support 

the college was not authorized until 1967. Soon 

afterward, the first Board of Regents was elected 

to govern the college. Dr. J.R. Jackson became 

the first president of the college in 1968, and 

classes began that fall. In March 1978, Dr. W.A. 

Bass succeeded Dr. Jackson and served as president 

until 1988. At that time, Dr. John R. Grable 

was named president and served until August 

1996. Dr. Millicent M. Valek became president 

following Dr. Grable’s retirement and is the current 

president of Brazosport College. 

Brazosport College has a history of responding 

to the educational needs of residents of 

southern Brazoria County. When the college 

opened its doors in 1968, 879 students enrolled 

for classes. In the past fall semester, almost 

8,500 students enrolled in both credit and noncredit 

courses. Educational programs offer 

learning opportunities for all ages. From Kid’s 

Kollege to transfer and technical programs to 

the Adult Life and Learning Program, 

Brazosport College offers diverse programs to 

meet the educational needs of the community. 

The college credit program offers courses 

which transfer to a four-year college leading to a 

bachelors degree. In the transfer program, the 

college has adopted the common course numbering 

system which provides a common definition 

of courses throughout the state and simplifies 

the transfer of courses among colleges. 

Information gained from studies of transfer students 

shows that students who begin their work 


at community colleges do as well in their upper 

level courses as students who begin at a fouryear 

college. 

Brazosport College offers a number of technical 

certificates and degrees leading to employment. 

From Welding and Pipefitting to Process 

and Computer Technology, the college offers 

training on state-of-the-art equipment to provide 

students with skills needed for the current 

job market. Over 90 percent of the students 

who enrolled in technical programs are 

employed after completing their courses. 

The college also provides customized training 

to meet the needs of business and industry. 

Technical courses are often adapted to meet specific 

training needs. The Center for 

Business/Industry Training responds to defined 

needs by providing both consulting and training 

services in flexible formats. The Small Business 

Development Center provides business consulting 

services to address specific concerns 

through one-on-one counseling sessions, workshops, 

and seminars. 

In addition to these programs, Brazosport 

College provides a number of other services to 

meet the needs of students. College counselors 

advise students regarding transfer, career fields 

and other services offered by the college. 

Student financial aid and scholarships are available 

to assist students in continuing their education. 

Student organizations encourage 

involvement in campus activities. The 

Community Education program offers a variety 

of courses in areas such as hobbies, professional 

development, and GED preparation. The college 

also offers concerts, plays and art shows for residents 

of southern Brazoria County. 

Brazosport College celebrates its 30th 

anniversary in the fall of 1998. Over this period 

of time, the college has continued to grow in 

enrollment and to expand its programs and 

courses to meet the needs of the community. 

❖ 

PHOTOS COURTESY OF GEORGE CRAIG PHOTOGRAPHY 

BRAZOSPORT COLLEGE 

BOARD OF REGENTS 

Ed Denman 

Isabel Evans 

Mike Golden 

Joe C. Greer, Jr. 

G.G. “Jerry” Hinojosa, Vice Chair 

Joseph Pessarra, Chair 

Karen Shewbart 

Ravi Singhania 

Allen G. York 

BRAZOSPORT COLLEGE 

PRESIDENT 

Dr. Millicent Valek 


RAMADA INN, 

LAKE JACKSON 

❖ 

With 145 Texas-size guest rooms, 

including 21 VIP rooms, the Ramada 

Inn is home-away-from-home to 

many business and corporate 

travelers from all parts of the world. 

At the Ramada Hotel, Lake Jackson, the very 

best service, facilities, and amenities combine to 

provide for the comfort and convenience of 

guests, whether business travelers, executives, 

tourists, or convention attendants. 

Focal point of the Ramada is its attractive 

6,350 square foot, climate-controlled atrium 

with a gorgeous lobby fountain, but visitors will 

also be pleased with the Texas-size guest rooms 

and array of amenities. Major renovations have 

recently been completed, and the Ramada now 

features a formal Texas Hill Country look. 

A lovely outdoor screened-in pool and exercise 

rooms are available, as well as room service, 

laundry, audio-visual equipment, fax and copy 

services, a restaurant, bar and catering, all in an 

atmosphere that provides exceptional attention to 

detail to make every stay a luxurious experience. 

Vacationers who come to the area for the outstanding 

Gulf fishing will find information 

about deep sea trips on Captain Elliott’s party 

boats, as well as some special “perks” for their 

catch. Once the fish are cleaned at the dock, the 

fisherman can bring the snapper fillets to the 

chef at Three Oaks Restaurant and Veranda Bar, 

where they will be prepared to specification— 

grilled, blackened, or sautéed—and served family-style, 

with potatoes and vegetables. 

The Ramada also caters to business travelers, 

with a total of 145 rooms, including 53 VIP 

rooms at present, and plans to convert to more 

of the executive-level rooms geared to the corporate 

traveler. These are used frequently by visitors 

from Germany, France, South America and 

other parts of the globe. 

Since the Ramada offers the largest banquet 

facility in the area at this time, residents, organizations 

and companies often utilize this service, 

which can accommodate banquets for up to 300 

guests. The well-trained staff and attractive facilities 

provide the perfect setting for a wedding 

and reception, anniversary party, business or 

industry dinner and other events, with catering 

available on site. Activities held here regularly 

include the Brazosport Chamber of Commerce 

Business After Hours and State of the 

Community gatherings, city meetings, 

Christmas and retirement parties, conventions, 

and numerous school functions. The Brazosport 

Rotary Club meets here weekly. 

Built in 1978, the Ramada is convenient to 

many of the area’s most popular attractions. 


Among these are strolling along the beach or the 

jetties, charter boat trips for deep sea fishing or 

to the 350-acre Flower Gardens National Marine 

Sanctuary for SCUBA diving, the Freeport 

Audubon Christmas Bird 

Count, the Great Texas Coastal 

Birding Trail, and the Spring 

Migration Celebration of Birds 

on the Central Flyway. Other 

nearby attractions include the 

Sea Center Texas marine educational 

center and aquarium, 

Brazosport Center for the Arts 

and Sciences, a shopping mall, 

and much more. 

The Ramada and its personnel 

are active in the community, 

including membership in 

the Brazosport Chamber of 

Commerce and involvement in 

its Taste of the Town event, as 

well as its tourism, and leadership 

programs. Other memberships 

include the Angleton 

Chamber of Commerce, and 

Associated Builders and 

Contractors and Brazosport 

Rotary Club. The Ramada is a 

sponsor of the Rotary Shrimp Boil, 

helps promote Sea Center Texas, 

the Run for the Arts event of 

the Center for the Arts, and the 

Migration Celebration and Great 

Texas Coastal Birding Trail projects 

of the Texas Parks and Wildlife 

Department. Ramada personnel 

participate in Brazoria County 

Day in Austin and Junior 

Achievement Career Days, work 

with Brazoria County Youth Homes, 

assist area schools, including 

both the Brazosport ISD and 

Brazosport College, help with 

the annual Fishing Fiesta and 

Mosquito Festival, and sponsor four 

children in the Childreach program 

of Plan International. 

The Ramada Hotel is operated by 

Euro Hospitality Management 

Company. Management philosophy 

emphasizes a winning combination 

of hotel expertise and Texas hospitality, and staff 

members are personally committed to providing 

luxurious and hospitable treatment of the 

Ramada Hotel’s guests. 

❖ 

Above: A “party boat” trip in the Gulf 

off the shores of Brazoria County may 

yield a whopper such as this. The 

Ramada even offers special “perks” to 

fishermen. 

Below: The Ramada Inn, Lake 

Jackson, which is convenient to many 

area attractions including Gulf 

beaches and Sea Center Texas, is a 

favorite stopping place for family 

vacations. 


ANGLETON 

INDEPENDENT 

SCHOOL 

DISTRICT 

❖ 

Above: The Albert Sidney Johnston 

School opened in 1910. It was later 

known as Central Elementary, and 

used until the 1960s. 

Below: Students at the Albert Sidney 

Johnston School in 1915. 

Throughout its more than 100-year history 

of serving the educational needs of the area, 

the Angleton Independent School District 

has enjoyed community support in all senses of 

that word. 

“Education of children has been a priority of 

area leaders since 1892,” said Dr. J. Herman 

Smith, superintendent. 

In that year Lewis R. Bryan, one of Angleton’s 

founders, and George W. Angle, president of the 

Velasco Terminal Railroad, donated a lot for 

school purposes, and the first school, an 

unpainted, unceiled 20 by 30-foot frame building 

financed with public contributions, was 

built to serve as both school and community 

meeting place. 

Enrollment grew steadily, and soon residents 

donated funds for another room the same size, 

and then a third, built end-to-end with the first. 

The primary grades were moved to an old drug 

store near the present courthouse. 

Realizing by 1897 that they needed more permanent 

facilities, residents overwhelmingly 

approved bonds for a two-story brick school, but 

the 1900 storm reduced it to a pile of rubble. 

Despite business and personal losses, residents 

funded another building, with classes 

meeting in temporary quarters in the interim. 

After another hurricane in 1909 destroyed it, as 

well, they built a third. A few years later a twostory 

high school was built a block to the east. 

The district’s first graduate, Frank K. Stevens, 

completed his work in 1901 by passing the test 

for a temporary teaching certificate. He joined 

the next year’s class for the district’s first commencement 

ceremony. 

Enlargement of buildings and of district 

boundaries marked the years that followed. In 

1931, the number of grades increased from 10 to 

11, and in 1940 to 12. By 1941, the district had 

schools at additional locations, including the 

Marshall School for African-American students 

and a separate school for Hispanic students. 

The county’s economy switched from agriculture 

to industry in the 1940s, and a population 

boom almost swamped school districts. As a 

“bedroom community” without significant 

industry within its borders, AISD was responsible 

for educating with many more students but 

received little significant increase in tax value, as 

well as facing wartime shortages that made 

school construction virtually impossible. Onestory 

classrooms were finally built around the 

perimeter of the elementary school campus, and 

eventually the federal government helped build 

part of what is now Northside Elementary. Due 

to crowding in lower grades, sixth graders 

joined grades seven and eight at the high school, 

where classes met in every available site, including 

the stage and a hallway. 

Although the tax base still had not caught up 

with the population growth, construction on a 

new high school facing Locust Street began in 

1949. Despite low per student 

expenditures, college 

records indicated Angleton 

students were getting a better 

education than those from 

many more affluent districts. 

Financial problems continued 

to plague the district 

until the mid-1950s, when 

school trustee Leland B. Kee 

and then superintendent, 

Dr. Charles M. Kelso conceived 

the idea of annexing 

the oil-rich Chocolate Bayou 

and Liverpool districts. After 


some preliminary work with Brazosport ISD, 

they approached the Brazoria County School 

Board, which approved the plan, but years 

of court battles were required before AISD 

gained its objective. A few years later, the 

wisdom of this addition was even more apparent, 

as that area became the site of major industrial 

construction. 

Population increases and racial integration led 

to the construction of Southside, Westside and 

Rancho Isabella elementary schools over a 30- 

year period; a new high school (now Angleton 

Middle School East) in 1960; and Angleton High 

School, Frontier Elementary, and Angleton 

Middle School West in more recent years. 

The district now covers 396 square miles, has 

ten large, modern schools and facilities for 

administration, food services and transportation. 

“Through strong, innovative programs in 

everything from reading to technology, we are 

confident we are preparing our students for the 

21st century,” said Dr. Smith. 

The district is funded by a budget of approximately 

$32 million, based on a total tax roll of 

about $1.713 billion. 

From a single teacher in its first year, the professional 

staff has grown to almost 500, including 

speech pathologists, librarians, school nurses, 

counselors, principals, assistant principals, 

and others, as well as 300 auxiliary employees. 

❖ 

Above, left: Hundreds of former 

students gathered to see old friends 

and share school memories at the 

district’s 100th anniversary in 

October of 1997. 

Above, right: Angleton High School was 

built in 1980. By 1998, the school had 

almost 1,800 students in grades 9-12. 

Below: After receiving top scores on 

statewide testing, Angleton ISD was 

named a Recognized district by the 

Texas Education Agency for 1996-97. 


❖ 

BILL & MARIE 

DEWITT FAMILY 

& 

DEWITT 

FURNITURE 

COMPANY 

Above: Bill and Marie DeWitt. 

Below: DeWitt Furniture, Inc., 601 

South Gordon Street, Alvin, Texas. 

The DeWitt Furniture Company was originally 

established in 1903 as Haley Hardware, on 

Gordon Street, one block south of the railroad 

tracks in Alvin. J.J. Dodson and his son-in-law, 

Ralph DeWitt, acquired the business in the 

1920s, and in 1928 Bill and Marie DeWitt 

arrived in Alvin and began their association with 

the store. 

Bill, who was reared in Brackettville, Texas, 

was the third of four sons of Joseph and 

Elizabeth Cornell DeWitt. Bill’s grandfather, 

Bartholomew (Bart) Joseph DeWitt, a Civil War 

veteran, founded the town of San Angelo, Texas, 

which he named after his wife, Angela. 

After graduating with an engineering degree 

from the University of Texas, Bill was hired by 

Western Electric Company, predecessor to Bell 

Labs and Lucent Technology, in Chicago, 

Illinois, where he met and married Marie 

Zdanke. Marie was leading secretary for the 

company and was a champion tennis player for 

Western Electric. The daughter of Polish immigrants, 

she was a pianist who paid her tuition at 

the Chicago Academy of Music by playing the 

piano at silent movies in Chicago. 

After their marriage in Chicago in 1928, Bill 

and Marie moved to Alvin and worked for 

DeWitt Furniture and Hardware, purchasing the 

interests of Bill’s two brothers, Ralph and Jimmy. 

In 1954, a new building was constructed at the 

current location, 601 South Gordon Street, 

where DeWitt Furniture, Inc. has been ever 

since. Bill was the architect, engineer, and general 

contractor on the construction, with active 

participation by the rest of his family. 

Bill and Marie’s seven children all worked at 

the DeWitt store from the time they could walk 

until they went to college and thereafter, on holidays 

and during summer vacations. 

Their children are: 

Harriet Alexander, a realtor in Austin, who 

has five children. Elizabeth, a pediatrician in 

Seattle, Washington, is married and has two 

children. Barbara, of Boston, Massachusetts, is 

married and is an economics consultant. Susan, 

a Houston attorney, is married to Robert 

Logsdon and lives in Houston with daughter 

Katy. Two sons, Charles and Richard, live 

in Austin. 

Bill DeWitt, Jr. graduated from the University 

of Texas and became a U.S. Air Force fighter 

pilot. He married Georgia Louise Short of San 

Antonio, daughter of a veteran of World War I 

and II, who retired as a Colonel in San Antonio. 

Bill and Georgia have four children. James, a 

graduate of Sam Houston State University, and 

his wife, Francoise, live in League City. Ronald 

Anthony received his business degree from the 

University of Houston in Clear Lake, and works 

for Ratheon Electronics in Greenville, Texas. 

Rita Marie, a University of Texas graduate, is 

married to James Edmonds of Irving, Texas, an 

Air Force Major who works at the Pentagon. 

They have two children, Michael DeWitt and 

Elizabeth Marie, and live in Springfield, 

Virginia. Elizabeth Marie, who has an MBA 

degree from the University of Houston, Clear 

Lake, lives and works in Houston. 


Bill and Georgia DeWitt have worked at the 

furniture business since Bill left active duty with 

the Air Force in 1959. Bill then joined the Air 

Force Reserves and served 19 years, retiring as a 

Lt. Colonel. While Bill was performing active 

duty with the Air Force, Georgia managed the 

furniture business as well as the family. 

Bill DeWitt, Sr. passed away in 1985. His 

wife of 56 years, Marie Zdanke DeWitt, passed 

away suddenly in 1995. 

Bill and Marie’s second son, Joseph Cornell 

DeWitt, was the first Alvin High School student 

to become a doctor and return to Alvin to practice 

medicine. A family physician in Alvin, he 

married Catherine Belluomini from Galveston 

and they have three children. Dr. Robert DeWitt 

has practiced medicine in Alvin with his father 

for 10 years. Catherine DeWitt is a speech 

pathologist in the office with her husband and 

son. Lisa DeWitt and her husband, Lou Fuka, 

live in Austin. Deborah DeWitt, also of Austin, 

owns Prairie Rock Catering there. 

Margaret Ann DeWitt married Michael 

Hansen, and they live in Houston. They have 

three children. Michael and his wife, Leslie 

Moss, have a daughter, Emma Marie. Hans 

William, of Lawrence, Kansas, is in a Ph.D. program 

in the school of business. Matthew, who 

lives in New York, works for an investment 

banking firm. 

Robert Anthony DeWitt married Sharon 

Coursey from Dallas, and practices law in 

Houston. They have two children. Jennifer graduated 

from Brown University and UCLA graduate 

school, and works with children’s museums 

in New York City. Cornell, 

a University of Colorado 

graduate who attends 

graduate school at New 

York University, is in the 

art gallery business in New 

York City. 

Betty Loretta DeWitt 

and her husband, Richard 

Armstrong, live in Nassau 

Bay. Betty, who teaches at 

Alvin Primary School, has 

two married sons and a 

daughter. Xavier lives in 

Venezuela and Jaimie in 

Houston. Christina works 

and lives in California. 

The youngest of Bill and Marie’s sons, 

Thomas Michael, married Sharon Holland and 

lives in Pearland. Thomas practices law in Alvin. 

Thomas and Sharon have two children, a daughter, 

Diana, and a son, David, who attend 

Pearland High School. 

DeWitt family members have always been 

active in the community. Marie DeWitt served as 

president of the PTA for many years. Bill Jr. 

served twice on the Alvin City Council and as a 

director of the Alvin Chamber of Commerce. Dr. 

Cornell DeWitt served as a chamber director, 

president of the school board, and president of 

the Alvin Community College Board. Catherine 

DeWitt served as president of the chamber and 

president of the Foundation Board of Alvin 

Community College. 

❖ 

Above: Back row: Thomas DeWitt, 

Harriet DeWitt Alexander, Margaret 

DeWitt Hansen, Joseph DeWitt, Bill 

DeWitt Jr.; Middle row: Betty DeWitt 

Armstrong; Front row: Robert DeWitt, 

Bill DeWitt Sr., and Marie Zdanke 

DeWitt. 

Below: (left to right) Ronald DeWitt, 

Rita DeWitt Edmonds, Elizabeth 

DeWitt, James DeWitt, Georgia 

DeWitt, Bill DeWitt, Jr. 


COLUMNS, INC. 

❖ 

Above: Classic aluminum columns 

are the focal point for this home, 

while providing the ultimate in 

longevity, easy installation and 

maintenance. 

Below: Different styles of column caps 

and bases are available to suit any 

architectural style. Classic aluminum 

columns like those shown here have 

been made since 1963 by Columns, 

Inc. of Pearland. 

Few building products can claim to be virtually 

impervious to time, insects, and weather, 

but Columns, Inc. offers all those advantages. 

Harvey Rasmussen, owner of the aluminum 

column manufacturing company, grew up in the 

lumber and construction business. After serving 

in the Navy, he began working with a new industry—an 

aluminum window company, coming to 

Texas in 1956 to set up a place for that firm. At 

that point he decided to open 

his own business, making 

aluminum-framed shower 

doors and bathtub enclosures, 

and to settle permanently 

in this area. 

Rasmussen credits Robert 

Henson—who is retired, but 

is still his partner in 

Columns, Inc.—with the 

idea for using aluminum to 

make columns. Rasmussen 

was enthusiastic. By the next 

morning he had completed 

drawings, and the company 

began making the columns at 

night, as a sideline. Soon the 

columns were so successful 

that the company began 

building them full-time. 

The aluminum extrusion columns, with castings 

for caps and bases, are available with 

prime-coating or a baked-enamel finish. The 

company sells them to wholesale jobbers 

for resale to lumber yards and contractors 

throughout the United States, in Canada and 

the Caribbean. 

“Aluminum columns just make sense in a climate 

such as this,” Rasmussen says. They offer 

enduring beauty and load-bearing structural 

strength; can be used for remodeling, replacement, 

or new construction; are easy to install and 

maintenance-free; and carry a lifetime warranty 

against decay, split, and insects. The company 

ships from stock and is very inventory intensive. 

Classic spiral stairways made of aluminum 

and steel are the company’s only other product. 

Columns, Inc. prides itself on long-time 

retention of customers, half of whom have been 

on the books for 25 years or more. 

From the original three employees, the company’s 

payroll has grown to 25, half of whom 

have been there 15 years or longer. Three additions 

have been made to the company’s facilities. 

A community-oriented business, Columns, 

Inc. is a member of the Pearland-Hobby 

Chamber of Commerce. It is located at 

1011 North Main Street, Pearland; telephone 

281-485-3261; fax 281-485-1996. 


J. S. MCKINNEY, 

INC. 

J. S. McKinney, Inc. was established in 1957 

for the purpose of subcontracting industrial 

pipe fabrication and installation in the Dow 

Chemical Company and the old Ethyl Dow 

Company. 

Founded by Joe E. Johnston of Houston and 

Lake Jackson, the company operated under his 

name until 1970, when he retired and sold the 

business to Jim McKinney of Freeport, who had 

been with the company since 1958. J. S. 

McKinney, Jr. joined the firm in 1972 as vicepresident 

in charge of engineering. 

In the early 1970s the company shifted from 

the field of installation to concentrate on the 

construction of prefabricated piping assemblies 

to simplify on-site installation at power plants 

and industries. 

Many of these assemblies, which must be 

moved using special trucks, are ready to bolt up 

when they reach their destinations. About half of 

them go first to a packing facility on the Houston 

Ship Channel, where they are packaged for shipping 

to destinations throughout the world. 

In the past year the company has shipped 

piping assemblies to jobsites from Florida to 

Washington State, as well as to the Philippines, 

Venezuela and China. 

Over the years, employment has remained 

fairly constant at 35-45 employees, but the customer 

list has grown to include many out-oftown 

and out-of-state firms. 

J. S. McKinney, Inc. has been a member of 

the Brazosport Chamber of Commerce since 

1960, and is especially interested in the chamber’s 

role as an advocate for small business and 

a pro-business environment. 

The company’s facilities include a 60,000- 

square foot shop space and a brick office building 

at 302 Johnston-Cook Road in Clute; 

telephone 409-265-2515, fax 409-265-6120. 

❖ 

Above: Special trucks allow moving of 

huge piping assemblies to conform to 

highway height regulations. 

Below: Completed assemblies take 

varied forms to suit the needs of 

different applications. 


FREEPORT 

WELDING AND 

FABRICATING, 

INC. 

❖ 

Above: The main products of Freeport 

Welding and Fabricating, Inc., are 

fabricated pressure vessels and API 

tanks, which they ship all over the 

world. 

Below: “Cyclones,” such as this one, 

are made from customers’ drawings 

and specifications by Freeport 

Welding and Fabricating, Inc., 

utilizing state-of-the-art computer 

technology. 

Roy Yates, president of Freeport Welding and 

Fabricating, Inc. (FWF), can look back on a 

multitude of changes since he began work here 

as a welder in 1974. 

At that time he was one of four employees in 

the business, which had been founded in 1962 

by Roy Fowler. Now, with a customer base that 

looks like a “Who’s Who” of Gulf Coast industries, 

the company’s payroll includes about 100 

persons, and at its peak during the economic 

boom of the early 1980s the number rose to 120. 

Through the years Yates has bought out his 

partners, and now has only one—his son Danny, 

a 1986 mechanical engineering graduate of 

Rice University. 

Company literature emphasizes the philosophy 

that has brought the company’s success: 

“Top quality, performance, and know-how.” 

“We’re an ASME shop, and our main products 

are fabricated pressure vessels and API 

tanks, which we ship all over the world,” Yates 

said. “We work from customers’ drawings and 

specifications, and our operations are extremely 

computerized and high-tech.” 

Other preferred job types include largediameter 

fabricated pipe (24-inch and over), 

industrial sheet metal, heavy plate, large diameter 

fabricated elbows, skid units, and more. The 

complexity and size of the jobs varies tremendously, 

with some requiring up to six months, 

and a considerable number of others involving 

emergency work for plants all along the Gulf 

Coast. Materials include all alloys, sizes and 

thickness, depending on the customer’s needs. 

“To satisfy most of our customers’ welding 

requirements, we must have qualified weld 

procedures on file,” Yates said. This means actually 

welding sample pieces of the material and 

sending the sample welds to a laboratory for 

testing. A weld procedure can cost as much as 

$1,000 to qualify, and Freeport Welding currently 

has over 200. 

Key personnel, in addition to Roy and 

Danny Yates, include George Dugan, sales manager; 

Blain Sollock, vice president of production; 

and Larry Robertson, vice president of 

quality control. 

Freeport Welding and Fabrication, Inc., is 

housed in buildings with a total of 35,000 square 

feet of floor space at 211 East 8th Street, Freeport; 

telephone 409-233-0121, 281-393-1411, or toll 

free at 1-800-560-0121; by fax at 409-233-0349; 

or on the Internet at www.freeweld.com. 


COUNTRY 

HEARTH 

INN 

Country Hearth Inn, Angleton, formerly 

Homeplace Inn, was the first of a chain of eight 

properties originally developed by Spencer 

Clements of Angleton. 

Clements’ goal was to provide professionally 

managed, small but unique, high-quality motor 

inns in small to medium size communities. 

The Angleton property opened in 1983, followed 

by San Marcos in 1985, and in 1986 and 

early 1987 by West Columbia, Freeport, 

Wharton, Alvin, Columbus and Huntsville. 

The company was later acquired by 

American Liberty Hospitality, Inc., owned by 

Nick and Vicki Massad, who changed the name 

to Country Hearth Inn. The Massads wanted to 

be part of a growing national chain without sacrificing 

the unique character of Homeplace Inns. 

The lobby of a Country Hearth Inn is where 

the comfort of the country begins. Visitors can 

relax in a cozy chair in front of a warm fireplace 

and chat or enjoy a quiet complimentary breakfast 

with fresh coffee, milk, juices, cereals, 

bagels, cream cheese, waffles and syrup, toast, 

butter and jelly, muffins, and fresh fruits, and 

catch up on the news with a local newspaper or 

USA Today. 

In the evenings they can enjoy a complimentary 

cocktail, soft drinks, coffee and snacks by 

the pool. 

Each Country Hearth Inn has a combination 

of large double- and king-size guest rooms, 

complete with in-room coffee pots, oversized 

towels, shampoos, special soaps, and other 

amenities traditionally found only in larger 

hotels. Some of the rooms are also equipped 

with a microwave and refrigerator for the convenience 

of guests. Handicapped rooms are 

available, equipped for full wheelchair access. 

The rooms are spacious, and each has a 

remote control television with all basic channels 

plus expanded cable, including HBO, ESPN, 

CNN and Disney. 

Country Hearth Inns offer an escape from 

conventional lodging at economy prices, and a 

comfortable alternative for travelers who want 

to leave behind antiseptic decor, unattractive 

furnishings, and lack of amenities. 

Guests are surrounded in true country elegance 

and charm and always feel at home, no 

matter where home is. 

❖ 

Above: The Country Hearth Inn, 

Angleton 

Below: The comfortable and homey 

atmosphere of the lobby at Country 

Hearth Inn makes this a favorite 

place for visitors to relax. 


MACON 

SASH & DOOR 

❖ 

Above: Macon Sash & Door in 

Angleton caters to builders, 

wholesalers, retailers, lumber yards 

and individuals. 

Below: Macon Sash & Door, owned 

and operated by J.T. and Ardell 

Macon, has a wide variety of doors on 

display, including these ornate glassinset 

models. 

The Macon family has been building houses 

in Brazoria County since the 1940’s. It’s easy to 

see why J.T. and Ardell Macon are so successful 

with Macon Sash and Door Company. 

As an Angleton homebuilder 

in the 1960’s and 

70’s, J.T. Macon saw firsthand 

the difficulties local 

builders had getting materials 

from distant suppliers. 

Doors he needed often took 

six weeks or more for delivery. 

Frustrated with the situation, 

J.T. and his wife, 

Ardell, opened Macon Sash 

and Door Company in 1977 

to provide Brazoria County 

with a “builder friendly” 

supplier. 

The venture was so successful 

that Macon phased 

out his building business to 

concentrate on the door 

company. They now provide 

local builders with a total 

house package of doors in 

two days. They also provide goods and services 

to wholesalers, retailers, individuals and lumber 

yards, with customers as far away as 

Massachusetts, Georgia, Oklahoma, Arizona, 

and even South Africa. 

Macon Door carries a wide selection of elegant 

leaded glass entry doors of mahogany, oak 

and metal insulated. They offer a complete line 

of interior doors, pre-hung for immediate installation. 

Many doors are on display so builders’ 

clients and individuals can see the product 

before they buy it. 

Windows are also available, insulated, singleglass, 

or double-pane in any size, shape or 

configuration. Keeping current with changing 

times, Macon Door will have windows to meet 

the September 1998 windstorm regulations. 

Cabinet plywood, molding, and other carpentry 

needs are available to trim out and decorate a 

house in the wood preferred. 

Macon Sash and Door plans to keep making 

Brazoria County beautiful. The business, located 

at 124 Ketchum Court, Angleton, is open from 

8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., Monday through Friday, 

and can be reached by phone at 409-849-8231, 

or by fax at 409-849-9342. 


Tri-Construction Company, Inc., incorporated 

on Feb. 1, 1971, is a family-owned and operated, 

general contracting business in the petrochemical 

construction market. 

The company was founded by Baxter 

Bundick, the father and grandfather of the current 

owners. The company’s original equipment 

was a truck and a bulldozer. The company operated 

under the Bundick name for six years, then 

a sister company was formed under the name 

Tri-Construction. 

After Baxter Bundick’s death, his two sons, 

Robert and Vernon, operated the company for 

six years prior to incorporation. 

They operated the equipment during the day, 

then at night Vernon switched to equipment 

repairs and Robert worked up bids for other jobs. 

Basically, they did everything during that time. 

The success of their efforts, and those of 

their successors, is reflected in the growth of facilities. 

Originally located on five acres, Tri-Con now 

occupies an 11-1/4-acre tract at the same site. 

The original structures were a 1,280-square 

foot office and a 5,000-square foot shop building. 

The present facilities are a 3,752 square foot 

office, and three shops comprising a total of 

30,700 square feet. 

The company specializes in three types of 

construction: piping, from fabrication to installation 

in the field; structural steel, from fabrication 

to installation; and civil work, ranging from 

dirt to concrete paving and foundations. 

Employing the latest in computer technology, 

Tri-Con serves a prime list of industrial clients 

in the area, including The Dow Chemical 

Company Texas Operations, Shintech, Inc., K- 

Bin, Silica Products, and others. 

Officers are R.W. Bundick, president; the late 

Vernon Bundick, vice president and treasurer; 

and Lisa Bundick Cobler, secretary. 

Tri-Construction Company, Inc. is located at 

5550 East Highway 332, Freeport; telephone 

409-233-7211; fax 409-233-5621. 

TRI-CONSTRUCTION 

COMPANY, INC. 

❖ 

Above: A 70-ton P&H mobile crane is 

used by Tri-Construction Company, 

Inc., to assist in setting this 77,000- 

pound T-160 tower at the Dow Texas 

Operations’ Oyster Creek facility. The 

tower has an outside diameter of 78 

inches, and is 96 feet tall. 

Below: Operating from the same 

location as in 1966, Tri-Con’s shop 

and office buildings now cover most of 

the 11.25 acre site on Highway 332. 


PETROGAS 

PROCESS 

SYSTEMS, INC. 

❖ 

Above: The Petrogas corporate offices 

are located in an house built about a 

century ago in Brazoria, and moved 

to the company’s Baileys Prairie 

location. The shop and other facilities 

are in separate buildings nearby. 

Below: This Petrogas unit was 

installed in the Allegheny National 

Forest. 

Petrogas Process Systems, Inc. was founded in 

1975 as a designer and manufacturer of process 

equipment for the oil/gas producing industry. 

Petrogas holds numerous patents and has a special 

expertise in the process design and construction 

of modular mini-gas plants for the 

recovery of ethane, propane, butane and natural 

gasoline from natural gas streams. 

The corporate offices of Petrogas were moved 

from Houston to Baileys Prairie in 1978 into an 

antique home, built in the 1890’s and moved 

from Brazoria to the Baileys Prairie site. The 

restoration required two years. Most of the original 

construction and moldings have been preserved. 

Nearby is the company’s modern, fully 

equipped manufacturing facility, which is ASME 

Code certified. 

The Federal Clean Air Act and worldwide 

concern for the pollution of our air provided 

new opportunities to Petrogas. The technologies 

developed by Petrogas for the recovery of vapors 

from gas streams were equally applicable to 

the recovery of vapors from contaminated 

air emissions. 

When visiting Petrogas, you will hear client 

meetings and telephone conversations in many 

languages: English, Spanish, French, Chinese; 

for Petrogas’ modular plants are installed and in 

operation in Mexico, Canada, Latin America, 

Asia, Europe and the Middle East. 

As founder, president and CEO of Petrogas, J. 

Paul Hewitt utilizes not only mechanical and 

petroleum engineering degrees from the 

University of Houston and an MBA from 

Harvard University, but also experience gained 

in various engineering and managerial positions 

with Exxon, as vice president of Camco, Inc., as 

president of Belmas, Inc., and over 20 years in 

business for himself. His wife, Pat, who has a 

Bachelor of Science degree from the University 

of Houston, has been actively involved with 

Petrogas’ operation since its inception, and 

serves as secretary-treasurer. 


With more than a half century of history as a 

family-owned business, Western Seafood of 

Freeport was founded by Wright Gore, Sr. and 

his wife, Isabel. 

“My father was employed at a Gulf service 

station,” explains Wright Gore, Jr., Western 

Seafood’s president. “The company put in a 

retail fish case at the station, and became interested 

in seafood. In 1944, they bought property 

in Freeport, and sent my father here to manage 

their business. When they became disenchanted 

with the fish business in 1948, they told him to 

find another job or pay down $5,000 on a leasepurchase 

arrangement.” 

The Gores sold their house in Freeport and 

Isabel went to Alabama to live with relatives 

while her husband kept the company going and 

provided another home for his family. 

He and Isabel worked hand in hand over the 

ensuing years, and grew the business. Wright Sr. 

is retired, but Isabel is still active in the clerical 

end of the business. 

When the Gores bought the business, 

shrimpers were just beginning to trawl in deep 

water for brown shrimp. 

Western Seafood serves a fleet of about 100 

independently owned Gulf trawlers, purchasing 

the catch from those boats and marketing it primarily 

to wholesale food distributors along the 

East Coast. The company has fostered a customer-supplier 

relationship with these loyal 

suppliers over the years. 

The Western Seafood brand is known 

throughout the industry as a premium product. 

Now a family-owned corporation, Western 

Seafood has certain auxiliary services, such 

as marine hardware, diesel engines and parts, 

fuel and oil sales, ice manufacturing, and 

trawler operations. 

Gore siblings who are also keys to the success 

of the business are Raymond, who manages the 

marine hardware division, and Gary, manager 

diesel parts division manager. 

WESTERN 

SEAFOOD OF 

FREEPORT 

❖ 

Above: Isabel and Wright Gore, Sr. 

purchased Western Seafood in 1948. 

Below: Independently owned Gulf 

trawlers tie up at the dock near 

Western Seafood of Freeport. 


JIMMY PHILLIPS 

❖ 

Above: Jimmy Phillips was a political 

campaigner who believed in keeping 

his name before the public. 

Below: One of Jimmy Phillips’ jobs at 

age 12 was selling The Saturday 

Evening Post. Shown in front of the 

old Phillips Hotel on January 10, 

1925, Phillips donned a hat and tie, 

as well as his roller skates, for a fast 

sales effort combined with a bit of fun. 

A born politician, even in his youth, when he 

was shining shoes and selling magazine 

subscriptions to earn spending 

money, Jimmy Phillips has 

always known the value of a 

broad smile, a friendly manner, 

and a firm handshake. Sometimes 

described as a Horatio 

Alger character, he climbed to 

prominence in state politics 

and toyed briefly with a gubernatorial 

candidacy. 

Phillips, who was orphaned at 

an early age, lived with his 

grandmother, who operated the 

Phillips Hotel in Angleton. He 

always said that the people of 

Angleton raised him. 

He won county and district 

extemporaneous speaking titles 

and placed second in state while 

in high school. At the University 

of Texas in Austin, he waited 

tables, sold sandwiches, and 

booked dance orchestras to 

pay his expenses. At one point, 

lacking the $25 he needed 

to remain, he thumbed a 

ride back to Houston until he could earn 

enough to return. 

In 1938, Phillips borrowed a suit to 

campaign for state representative. After talking 

to “every single voter in Brazoria and Matagorda 

counties,” he won handily, and was re-elected 

without opposition in 1940. He passed his 

bar exam in 1943, served in the Army for 

two years, then ran for the Texas Senate. His 

48,000-mile, door-to-door campaign brought 

him an upset victory, and he served continuously 

until 1959. 

Phillips set two filibuster records, and was 

called “the dominant figure in the Senate in 

uncovering the veterans’ land scandal.” 

Phillips, who described himself as “always a 

Democrat, though sometimes with more enthusiasm 

than others,” withdrew as a gubernatorial 

candidate in 1956, when he realized he could 

not garner the necessary financial support. 

His typically colorful explanation: “A monkey 

on a bicycle just can’t beat a monkey on 

a motorcycle.” 

He resigned his Senate seat to join the legal 

department at Dow Chemical Company for several 

years, then built a law office across from the 

Brazoria County Courthouse and went into private 

practice with his two sons. 


BASF 

CORPORATION 

BASF, which stands for Badische Anilin & 

Soda Fabrik, had its beginnings in Mannheim, 

Germany, in 1865, when Frederick Engelhorn 

founded it to make synthetic dyes for the 

textile industry. Today, BASF Worldwide comprises 

more than 300 sites employing 130,000 

in 160 countries. 

Formed in 1985, BASF Corporation (North 

American branch of the worldwide BASF 

Group) now employs approximately 18,000 

people, with the Freeport site, opened in 1958 

and currently employing over 800 people, as 

one of the major U.S. locations. 

Major product areas and their uses include: 

Acrylic Monomers—used for disposable diapers 

and for surface-coating raw materials and 

plastics, such as in paints; for textiles, adhesives, 

polishes and waxes, caulks and sealants, and 

PVC cement. 

The Caprolactam Group—raw materials for 

caprolactam (with some cyclohexanone used as 

solvents in producing magnetic recordings and 

industrial coatings). Most of the Freeport site’s 

caprolactam is used to produce nylon in its 

Polycaprolactam plant. Ammonium sulfate, a 

byproduct of caprolactam, is used in fertilizers. 

Polycaprolactam Plant—produces nylon 

polymer for carpet, apparel, food wrap, automotive 

products, filaments, and base resins for 

compounding. 

The Oxo/Diols Group—produces oxo-alcohols, 

neopentyl-glcol and 1,6 Hexandiol. These 

products are used as solvents and as intermediate 

chemicals for wood finishes, PVC siding, 

oils, plastic coatings, and herbicides. 1,6 

Hexandiol is an intermediate used for Polymeric 

systems (polyesters), surface coatings, adhesives, 

and plasticizers. 

Polymin—produces cationic water soluble 

polymers for the paper industry’s use as retention, 

draining, and fixing agents. It increases 

strong bonding between large and small paper 

fibers, thus allowing paper manufacturers to use 

more recycled paper at higher rates without loss 

in quality. Polymin also reduces carbon in paper 

manufacturing wastewater. 

❖ 

Above: BASF Corp., Freeport site 

front entrance, June, 1998 

Below: BASF employees at 1998 site 

“Responsible Care Week,” April 1998. 


OUR LADY 

QUEEN OF 

PEACE 

❖ 

Above: A computer class is shown 

with Nancy Brewster, teacher, and 

Jack Hawthorne, principal. 

Middle: Sister Antoinette, founder of 

Our Lady Queen of Peace School, is 

shown with students and teachers. 

Below: Students leaving for Camp 

Kappe, an environmental camp that 

fifth grades attend each year. 

Service—to its students, their families and the 

community—is the guiding principle under 

which Our Lady Queen of Peace School operates. 

This Catholic school, which is open to children of 

all faiths, ethnic groups and nationalities, is permeated 

by Christian ideals and values and committed 

to meeting the needs of the total person. 

The school has an enriching atmosphere of 

Christian love and acceptance. All teachers are 

certified, the school is fully accredited, and its 

childcare is state licensed. 

OLQP offers academic excellence and spiritual 

guidance, reflected in the outstanding 

results its students achieve on standardized 

tests. OLQP students currently rank in the top 

12 percent of the nation on the Stanford 

Achievement Test (SAT), which is an examination 

of more than basic skills. This test is used 

by all Catholic schools and most private college 

preparatory schools throughout the nation. 

A regional, non-profit school, OLQP is not 

directly affiliated with any one parish, and is 

owned by its families. It was founded by a 

Danbury native, Sister Marie Antoinette Peltier, 

who also served as its first principal. After St. 

Mary’s Catholic School closed in the 1960s, it 

became Sister Antoinette’s dream and vision to 

build a school in Brazoria County. Until 1997, 

this was the only Catholic school in the county. 

OLQP began operation with just 67 students 

in 3- and 4-year-old pre-kindergarten through 

second grade, attending classes in rented buildings 

at St. Michael’s in Lake Jackson, then at St. 

Jerome’s in Clute. The present building was dedicated 

in 1986. The 1998-99 enrollment is estimated 

at 350, with classes through sixth grade. 

The board has voted to add grades seven and 

eight by the year 2000. 

Located on a 19-acre 

tract, the school is “in a 

building mode,” with planning 

under way for the 

next phase. 

Naomi Smith, developmental 

director, points out 

that many parents are professional 

people who have 

active lives and need a 

place where they are a partner 

with the school for the 

child’s day. What makes 

OLQP unique is that it offers total care for the 

children for the full day. 

Parents can leave children any time after 6:30 

a.m. and pick them up by 6 p.m., knowing they 

are in a loving, safe environment, and that all 

laws of God, nature and man will be obeyed. 

The school emphasizes community involvement, 

hosting meetings of Scout troops, providing 

practice areas for soccer, basketball, Little 

League, and other activities for children, and is 

working with Scouts and local industry to 

reestablish the St. Francis Nature Trail. 

In 1994, Sister Antoinette was named 

Brazosport Woman of the Year, the first time a 

religious leader had received such an award. It 

recognized that the school is a small business 

contributing much more than education, and 

that it is not a stand-alone entity, but is a viable 

part of the community. 

Our Lady Queen of Peace is a business, and 

its business is to do God’s work and educate 

His children. The school’s staff never loses sight 

of that. 


Throughout Pearland’s history, the school has 

been a focus of the town’s citizens. Early facilities 

included a small frame building later used 

by the Church of Christ, the back of Livesay’s 

store, the Richland School on Smith-Miller 

Road, the Rice School on the Manvel Road, and 

the Suburban Gardens School in Brookside. 

The first school, located on two lots on Park 

Avenue, was built in 1894. Eight students were 

taught by Miss Mary Bolen. The school was furnished 

with long benches, with bookshelves in 

the back and a wood-burning box heater in the 

middle of the room. 

Enrollment climbed to 23 the next year, and 

by 1895 the school had four rooms, four teachers 

and almost 100 pupils. 

On September 8, 1900, a hurricane almost 

blew Pearland off the map. The original schoolroom 

was damaged, delaying the start of classes 

until October. 

In 1912, citizens approved $6,000 to build 

a two-story brick school. C. E. Barrick was 

the principal and Berry MiIler Sr. was a teacher. 

The school taught all eleven grades required at 

that time. 

After another hurricane demolished the top 

story of the new school in 1915, Mr. Miller and 

others cleaned out the debris and children 

returned to classes, but high 

school students had to 

attend the Webster School 

until 1936. 

A high school was built 

in 1937 at FM 518 and 

Grand Boulevard. Pearland’s 

first students were graduated 

in 1938, and the first 

yearbook, The Gusher, was 

printed in 1939. 

Since 1937, the district 

has had eight superintendents; 

B. B. Ainsworth, 

Harry McAninch, J. D. 

Gray, Lloyd Ferguson, 

Steven Prensner, Robert 

Turner, Preston Bullard, and 

James Schleider. 

Pearland ISD now has 

seven elementary campuses, 

two middle schools, 

two junior high schools, 

and one high school. A $45 million dollar budget 

provides free education to 9,300 students. 

The district has 1,500 employees. 

With a growth rate of 6 to 7 percent per year, 

the district is working diligently to provide the 

necessary facilities for students. 

The district was “recognized” by the Texas 

Education Agency in 1997 and 1998. In 1998, 

five campuses were named as “exemplary” and 

three as “recognized” schools. 

PEARLAND 

INDEPENDENT 

SCHOOL 

DISTRICT 

❖ 

Above: Pearland School, built in 1912 

at a cost of $6,000. 

Below: Rapid growth has required a 

major addition to the Pearland High 

School building constructed in 1989. 

The new facilities, located to the left of 

the area shown, were scheduled for 

completion in July of 1998. 


PRUDENTIAL 

ALLIED, 

REALTORS 

Prudential Allied, Realtors’ purpose is to provide 

quality, professional handling of real estate 

transactions for its clients and customers, with the 

best interests of each foremost in mind; to subscribe 

to, maintain and enforce the ethics of good 

business practices, including the National 

Association of Realtors Code of Ethics; and to support 

and encourage professionalism in the real 

estate industry. 

Prudential Allied, Realtors is the DBA 

(assumed name) of Pear Land Properties, Inc., 

founded in 1976. Within two years it was handling 

a greater percentage of real estate than any 

other Pearland office. The company has an 

established reputation of honest, competent 

professionalism, and its associates are respected 

members of the Pearland area business community. 

Since November of 1979, the company has 

been owned and operated by Mary Starr and 

David S. Miller. 

Pearland is “home,” but the company transacts 

business all over Texas and out of state with other 

licensed brokers/Realtors. Location of the main 

office in Pearland allows service to southeast 

Houston/Hobby Airport/southern Harris County, 

NASA/Clear Lake, Friendswood/Alvin areas and 

the northern portions of Brazoria and Galveston 

counties. The company handles new and resale 

homes, mobile homes, lots, acreage, investment 

and lease properties, commercial and residential, 

farms and ranches, and other parcels of real estate. 

The company was the first Pearland-based 

Realtor to provide Multiple Listing Service (MLS) 

to the area. Its professionals are members of the 

Bay Area Board of Realtors, Houston Association 

of Realtors’ Multiple Listing Service (MLS) and 

Commercial MLS, and are active in community 

business, social, sports, cultural and religious 

organizations. 

Company owners hold high offices and directorships 

in several professional organizations. 

Pear Land Properties, Inc. was affiliated with 

the Homes for Living Network from 1982-1988, 

when it affiliated with Prudential, becoming 

Prudential Pear Land Properties, Realtors. The 

association with the image and financial strength 

of Prudential helped to provide more services to 

buyers and sellers and enhanced the image and 

professionalism of the company. In June of 1994, 

the name was changed to Prudential Allied, 

Realtors, to reflect the growth from a local to a 

regional entity. 

❖ 

Prudential Allied Realtors, 

3007 East Broadway, Pearland 


Based in Manvel, Texas, for over 20 years, 

Gates Machine Tool Repair, Inc. specializes in 

servicing customers operating machine shops, 

paper mills, machine tool companies, and other 

corporate maintenance departments. The modern 

50,000+ square foot facility allows for disassembly, 

repair, rebuilding, re-assembly, and 

erection of numerous different machines. 

“Rebuilding machine tools could be the best 

business decision a company will make, since 

replacing older equipment with newer machinery 

can be a costly approach to achieve an operation’s 

desired performance and precision,” says 

David Gates, founder and president of the company. 

“A complete rebuild restores accuracy 

to your machines and extends the life of 

your investment.” 

Gates’ experienced craftsmen and knowledgeable 

personnel understand all of the complexities 

of machine tool reconditioning, and a 

design staff is available to create and manufacture 

parts for any repair or upgrade. Complete 

machine shop services help preserve and 

expand the customer’s machine capabilities 

through component repair and manufacture of 

replacement parts or alterations. Among other 

services offered are electrical repair, upgrades, 

and rewiring on new or existing switchgears; 

repairs, refurbishing, and upgrading of 

hydraulic systems; bringing newer technology 

and parts availability to older machine tools; 

and extensive final testing, including alignments, 

cleaning, painting, and hand spotting. 

The company has a variety of 

sophisticated equipment, 

including a planer capacity of 

8´×11´×36´ for working with 

numerous types of ways and 

columns for slide machining. A 

wide range of capabilities— 

including a high lifting capacity 

of up to 50 tons—allows Gates 

to manage machine tools of any 

size or make. Comprehensive 

field service is also available, 

with technicians to help repair, 

dismantle, erect, or remove 

equipment for service at the 

Gates facility. 

Prior to going into business 

for himself, Gates, a long-time 

Manvel area resident, had been employed as a 

machine tool mechanic for other firms. The business 

began with only himself and his wife Sandra, 

and grew steadily, until they suddenly found 

themselves with a building and 20 employees. 

The Gates are active in the community, and previously 

served in the fire department and emergency 

medical service. 

Gates Machine Tool Repair, Inc. is located at 

7102 Bissell, Manvel; telephone 281-489-8356; 

fax 281-489-0793. 

GATES MACHINE 

TOOL REPAIR, 

INC. 

❖ 

Above: Gates Machine Tool Repair, 

Inc. has a modern, 50,000+ square 

foot facility and a staff of experienced 

craftsmen and personnel. 

Below: A high lifting capacity of up to 

50 tons allows Gates to handle large 

components for machining and 

assembly. 


TEAM 

INDUSTRIAL 

SERVICES, INC. 

❖ 

Above: Team, Inc. of Alvin, established 

in 1973, is the country’s largest 

industrial leak sealing company. 

Below: Through repairs to steam, air, 

water, hydrocarbon or chemical 

process leaks, Team, Inc. helps plants 

conserve energy and save money. 

Team Industrial Services, Inc. has assembled 

and developed the personnel, manufacturing 

facilities, hardware, sealants, equipment, technical 

expertise, and documented training and safety 

programs to provide the world’s finest turnkey 

environmental services and products available. 

The company’s products and services include: 

•Leak repair services, 

•Emission monitoring services, 

•Hot tapping services, 

•Concrete repair services, 

•Energy management services, 

•Field machining services. 

Established in 1973 and publicly traded on 

the American Stock Exchange since 1980, Team, 

is the country’s largest industrial leak sealing 

company, capable of handling multiple plant 

site requirements. 

Founder A. B. Kennedy Jr. saw the need for 

an industrial service company to help plants 

conserve energy and save money by repairing 

costly steam, air, water, hydrocarbon, or chemical 

process leaks onsite and onstream, regardless 

of temperature, pressure or process. He assembled 

the companies to provide these services—a 

team concept—and it immediately began establishing 

the safety, quality, and technician training 

which has become the industry standard. 

Today, Team maintains the largest professional 

engineering and manufacturing support 

group available in the industry, and is also the 

nation’s largest emissions control services (ECS) 

company, utilizing the country’s largest fleet of 

Leak Trackers ® to provide a seamless combination 

of data collection, bar code scanning, and 

gas detection, and is certified 100 percent 

intrinsically safe by Factory Mutual. 

Immediate information about products and 

services provided by Team Industrial Services, 

Inc., is available by calling 1-800-662-8326, 

FAX 281-331-4107, writing to Team, Inc., 200 

Hermann Drive, Alvin, TX 77511; or contacting 

their web page at teamindustrialservices.com. 


FIRST STATE 

BANK 

One of the last remaining independent banks 

in Brazoria County, First State Bank is a locally 

owned and operated community bank. 

“We specialize in loans to small business 

and working people,” says D. E. Pell, President. 

“We are active in community affairs, and 

our officers and directors are members of 

numerous boards.” 

“First State Bank was chartered in 1958 to 

serve the banking needs of the Brazosport and 

surrounding communities, and to provide 

shareholders a reasonable return on their investment,” 

Pell says. “Our mission includes treating 

our customers with respect and providing them 

with a wide array of banking services at affordable 

prices; employing, training and retaining 

friendly, loyal, service-oriented employees; and 

continuing to be a model corporate citizen.” 

Original officers of the bank were J.T. Suggs, 

President; Allen J. Verdine Jr., Executive Vice 

President; Fred A. Palmer, Vice President; and 

Pollye M. Beacroft, E. L. Boston, J .P. Bryan, Jim 

Crews, Fred A. Palmer, Jimmy Phillips, J. T. 

Suggs and Allen J. Verdine Jr., Directors. 

Fred A. Palmer Jr. was elected President in 

1959, and D. E. Pell in 1982. Board Chairmen 

have included Nelson Griswold, 1961; J. T. S. 

Brock, 1976; F .A. Palmer Jr., 1979; Louis Jones, 

1982; and Charles T. Richardson, 1991. 

Present board members are J. T. S. Brock Jr., 

Robert W. Bundick, James A. Collins, D. E. Pell, 

Thomas S. Perryman, Charles T. Richardson, 

Lillian M. Sablatura and Advisory Director 

Robert A. Perryman. Officers, in addition to 

Pell, are Robert A. Perryman, Executive Vice 

President; Fred L. Malone, Senior Vice President 

and Cashier; Allen G. York, Senior Vice 

President; Lonnie W. Key, Vice President; Kerry 

F. Drabek, Marjorie A. Sebesta and Patsy L. 

Wisby, Assistant Vice Presidents; and Beverly A. 

Jones, Jeannie Mitchamore and Kim R. Trewen, 

Assistant Cashiers. 

The bank’s growth necessitated doubling its 

facilities in 1983. A one-bank holding company 

(FSB Bancshares, Inc.) was formed in 1996, and a 

branch office was opened in Lake Jackson in 1997. 

The bank’s assets have risen from 

$1,252,958.09 in 1958 to $63,700,000 in 

1998; loans from $408,269.01 to $26 million; 

and the employee total from five to 44. 

First State Bank’s locations are 200 North 

Brazosport Boulevard, Clute; and 490 This Way, 

Lake Jackson. 

❖ 

Above: First State Bank at 

490 This Way, Lake Jackson 

Below: First State Bank at 200 

North Brazosport Boulevard, Clute 


❖ 

SNOWDEN 

ENGINEERING, 

INC. 

Donna and James Snowden. 

Snowden Engineering, Inc. 

(SEI), founded on January 3, 

1983, in Pearland, Texas, by 

Dr. James D. Snowden, P.E., 

R. P.L.S., is a full service consulting 

civil engineering firm 

serving municipal, governmental, 

industrial and private clients 

throughout the State of Texas. 

The firm presently has three 

offices: 6059 West Broadway, 

Pearland, Texas 77581; 550 

Westcott, Suite 250, Houston, 

Texas 77007; and 113 South 

10th, Edinburg, Texas 78539. 

Dr. Snowden holds a 

Bachelors of Civil Engineering, a 

Masters of Civil Engineering 

and a Doctorate of Civil 

Engineering, all from Texas 

A&M University in College 

Station, Texas. He also served 

over five years in the United 

States Air Force as a Civil 

Engineering officer. 

Donna Snowden serves as 

Vice President/Secretary of 

the Corporation. She holds 

a Bachelors of Applied Arts 

and Sciences from Midwestern 

State University in Wichita 

Falls, Texas. 

SEI has been in business for over 15 years and 

offers services in the areas of engineering design 

and construction management of public works, 

engineering projects including paving, drainage, 

water distribution, wastewater collection and treatment, 

storm water pollution prevention, flood 

analysis, traffic control, bridges and construction 

sequencing as well as subdivision design. 

In addition, SEI has been providing services in 

the area of surveying and mapping since the 

firm’s inception. The staff of fully qualified and 

highly experienced professionals is dedicated to 

properly serving the client’s needs and goals in a 

timely and efficient manner. 

SEI currently serves as Drainage District 

Engineer for Brazoria County Conservation and 

Reclamation District Number 3 located in Alvin, 

Texas. The firm also serves as City Engineer for 

various other cities throughout the area. 

Snowden Engineering, Inc. has an extensive 

amount of experience in roadway and bridge 

design. Examples include the following projects 

designed by the firm: Pearland Parkway and 

Oiler Boulevard in Pearland; Louetta Road, 

Todville Road, Kuykendahl Road Realignment, a 

section of the Sam Houston Tollway and Hollister 

Road in Harris County; as well as FM 802 in 

Cameron County, Texas. 


Founded in 1982 by Paul B. (Peanut) 

Jacobsen and his wife, Janice, The Brevard 

Company began operation in a garage adjacent 

to their home. Soon the business took over one 

room of the house, then another room, and 

before long, the “house” was the “office.” 

The company’s first employee, other than the 

Jacobsens, was Jose San Miguel, who was hired 

as an estimator, but now has several other 

responsibilities in addition to estimating. 

The remarkable success of the company, 

which has enjoyed a growth of about 20 percent 

per year, is due in large part to its dedicated 

employees, as well as its ability to respond to 

customers’ needs quickly while doing quality 

work at a fair price, resulting in the expansion of 

business from satisfied customers. 

“It has been a good venture over the years,” 

Jacobsen says. “We believe in growing slowly 

and solidly. We work for all the major plants in 

the area and along the Gulf Coast, as well as 

work outside Texas. Repeat business is a top priority 

for Brevard.” 

The company’s motto—“Safety Is No Bull”— 

emphasizes its dedication to safe operations, 

which is demonstrated by numerous 

commendations for its outstanding safety 

record. 

An Accredited Quality Contractor, 

nationally recognized by ABC for its 

commitment to safety, training, employee 

benefits and community relations, 

Brevard has received numerous other 

awards, as well. 

Among these are The Business 

Roundtable Award of Excellence; 

S.T.E.P. Award, presented by ABC 

National Safety Committee (1998, 1997, 

1996, 1995, 1994); and Contractor 

Safety Recognition, presented by Dow 

Chemical U.S.A. (1997, 1996, 1995). 

The company presently has eight 

years with no OSHA recordables – an 

achievement possible only with dedicated 

company employees who strive for 

excellence in the industry. 

Brevard is very active in a broad 

range of industry-related and community 

organizations. 

The company can be reached by 

mail at P.O. Box 922, Brazoria, Texas, 

77422; telephone at 409-798-9157; fax at 

409-798-2280; and electronic mail at 

brevard@computron.net. 

THE 

BREVARD 

COMPANY 

❖ 

Above: This is typical of the insulation 

and scaffolding work done by Brevard 

in local industries. 

Below: Brevard works in the areas of 

insulation, scaffolding, fire proofing, 

sound proofing and abatement. 


PHILLIPS 66 

COMPANY 

SWEENY 

REFINERY 

❖ 

Above: A view of the Phillips 66 

refinery overlooking Maricle Lake. 

Below: Unit 24, Ethylene Production, 

at the Phillips 66 Sweeny Complex. 

The Phillips 66 Company’s Sweeny Refinery 

is a combination of rich history and golden 

promise for the future. Although located in Old 

Ocean, the Sweeny name has been used since 

the late 1950s, when the Old Ocean postmistress 

refused to sell the company land 

around the existing plant. Phillips then began 

using the Sweeny post office, the name became 

familiar to the company’s business associates 

and has been retained. 

With over 1,300 employees, the facility has 

been in operation for over 50 years since its 

construction as the only refinery built from the 

ground up by the United States government 

during World War II. During that era, when it 

was operated by J.S. Abercrombie and Harrison 

Oil Companies, the plant’s primary function was 

the production of high octane aircraft fuel for 

use by the Allies. 

The facility was shut down in 1945, and was 

dormant until 1947, when a Phillips official 

decided to begin the company’s Gulf Coast operations 

there. Phillips joined with a Houston 

investor, forming Alamo Refining Company, and 

bid about $13 million for the facility, hiring or 

transferring about 300 experienced employees, 

to begin operations on September 3, 1947. 

When Alamo was liquidated in 1949, Phillips 

became the plant’s sole owner, beginning a 

series of additions and improvements that have 

continued to the present. 

The Sweeny Complex is actually three plants: 

a refinery, a natural gas liquids processing center 

and a petrochemical production facility. It contains 

not only sophisticated processing equipment, 

state-of-the-art control rooms, storage 

tanks, office buildings, tanker and barge docks, 

and transportation networks, but also has its 

own medical facilities, communications system, 

and fire fighting/emergency response equipment. 

New approaches in management structure, 

re-engineering with input from employees to 

design a more efficient, productive organization, 

and other changes that began in 1992 have 

resulted in substantial cost reductions and 

improvements in operating integrity and morale. 

The refinery processes about 213,000 barrels 

of crude oil and 115,000 barrels of natural gas 

liquids each day and 4.5 billion pounds of ethylene 

annually. Primary products are ethylene, 

propylene, cyclohexane, automotive and aviation 

gasoline, diesel fuel, and natural gas liquids. 


TEXAS 

HONING, INC. 

Since 1976, Texas Honing, Inc. has provided 

specialized precision tubular products and services 

to a wide range of customers and has 

grown from a two-man operation to an expansive, 

technologically advanced, multi-plant corporation. 

The guiding tenet remains that every 

phase of production is critical to quality. 

Many customers originally contracted THI to 

perform a single service, such as honing. Having 

experienced the company’s dedication to quality, 

on-time deliveries and customer satisfaction, 

they realized that THI provides a diversified 

range of precision services, including drilling, 

boring, turning, straightening, and the convenience 

provided by single-source services. With 

an expanded client base and list of services, THI 

has emerged as an industry leader in servicing 

and providing tubular goods. 

A year after its founding by Robert Sidney 

Steele, Tommy Hanby and Dan Caine, THI suffered 

a devastating fire and was rebuilt. The 

remaining partners bought Cain’s interest. In 

mid-1978, they hired Steele’s son, Will Hayden 

Steele, as manager, and, in 1980, a second son, 

Robert Sterling Steele, joined the company. In 

1982, Robert Sidney and Will Steele bought 

Hanby’s interest. Robert Sidney Steele retired in 

1984, and his sons bought his interest, with 

Will overseeing sales and business/banking, 

while Robert directed production and technological 

improvement of equipment and manufacturing 

techniques. 

Between 1984 and 1994, THI grew from 

eight to forty employees, and, in 1995, Robert 

bought Will’s shares and became the sole owner. 

Thanks to the support of the Pearland Economic 

Development Corporation and growth of the 

industry, fifty additional jobs have been created, 

and facilities have been doubled. 

“Our success is due to the extensive cooperation 

between management and our dedicated 

employees,” Robert Steele says. “THI values the 

trust and confidence our customers have placed 

in us, and we are committed to furthering our 

standards of excellence to meet the diversified 

requirements of technology. We go the extra 

step to provide services which streamline our 

customers’ operations.” 

❖ 

Above: Texas Honing, Inc., has more 

than doubled its facilities since 1995, 

thanks in part to the assistance of the 

Pearland Economic Development 

Corporation. 

Below: Ninety persons are employed 

at Texas Honing, Inc., which provides 

specialized precision tubular products 

and services, including drilling, 

boring, turning, and straightening, to 

a wide range of customers. 


A. C. 

SHEET METAL 

❖ 

Mr. and Mrs. Jack Seal. 

When Jack and Suzanne Seal’s son Rick 

began showing calves in 4-H Club, they were 

dissatisfied with the heavy steel livestock show 

equipment available on the market, so Jack built 

light-weight aluminum show boxes and trim 

chutes for his son. 

The result so impressed other exhibitors and 

their parents and sponsors that he began filling 

orders from them. 

Since its first exhibit at the Houston 

Livestock Show in 1986, Show-Lite equipment 

been exhibited at scores of 4-H, FFA and other 

competitions across the country. Purchasers 

including schools and clubs, as well as individual 

exhibitors, have kept Seal busy ever since. 

After attending shows on weekends, he 

would go and work at night during the week to 

build the equipment, developing a design and 

receiving a patent on the chutes. 

Believers in “giving back to the kids,” the Seals 

have used some of the proceeds to donate equipment 

to the Brazoria County Fair Association. For 

which they have been long-time volunteers, and 

to sponsor calves in the scramble. 

The Seals also manufacture a quality line of 

truck tool boxes and flatbeds for trucks. 

Their company’s fame has spread, and 

besides customers throughout the United States, 

they have sold equipment in Mexico, South 

America, Australia, New Zealand, England, 

Spain, Germany, and other countries. 

Seal actually started building the equipment in 

1984, had his first commercial exhibit in 1986, 

and in 1990 bought A. C. Sheet Metal from A. C. 

Worrell, who had owned it for about 20 years. 

The Seals have since expanded the business, 

which is a medium-size industrial fabricating 

shop providing specialized sheet metal and 

component parts to industrial and commercial 

customers. 

Specialties are stainless steel, aluminum and 

specialty alloys, emergency quick-turn-around 

for those who need metal work, and supplying 

pieces and parts. 

The company’s broad customer base is due in 

part to its specialty equipment for shearing, 

bending and rolling materials. It also offers the 

area’s newest and latest technology in welding 

machines. 

A. C. Sheet Metal is located at 215 East 5th 

Street Freeport; telephone 409-233-8201; fax 

409-239-1808. 


The existence of the Brazoria County 

Historical Museum is a tribute to all those 

whose lives and efforts have made this county 

great, and to those who have donated time, talents, 

historical and financial resources toward 

protecting remaining documents and artifacts of 

the county’s heritage. 

Refusing to give up when early efforts died 

for lack of funding, a handful of determined 

enthusiasts, most of whom were members of the 

Brazoria County Historical Commission, found 

new hope for a museum site with construction 

of a large addition to the 1940 courthouse and a 

new library headquarters. This left the county’s 

1897 courthouse vacant. A proposal to demolish 

the building was met with a concerted effort 

by hundreds of petitioners seeking its use as a 

historical museum. 

In 1979, the county granted a 100-year 

lease to the Historical Commission for that purpose, 

and the building 

was placed on the 

National Register of 

Historic Places. 

Rapid growth of the 

adult probation department 

led to its use of 

the lower east wing for 

a time, in exchange for 

major repairs. An additional 

$500,000 from 

private sources then 

went toward renovations 

and establishment 

of what has become the 

model county museum 

in Texas. 

This impressive public 

support led the 

county to fund a portion 

of the museum’s 

budget for FY 1983, an 

investment that has 

continued to the present. 

The museum is 

the repository for a 

wide variety of artifacts, 

from a historic lighthouse 

turret and lens 

to items from a 

Confederate blockade 

runner, Indian spear and arrow points, and 

plantation furnishings. About 28,000 visitors 

tour the museum annually. 

Governed by a private, non-profit corporation, 

the museum is operated by a professional 

staff of six full-time employees, assisted by 

about 140 volunteers. It occupies the entire 

1897 courthouse. The national award-winning 

Austin Colony exhibit highlights the museum’s 

exhibitions. Four ground-floor galleries, comprising 

1,600 square feet of space, play host to 

a variety of changing exhibits. 

An extensive historical research library is 

available, along with a highly praised Internet 

site (www.bchm.org) utilized by teachers and 

genealogical and historical researchers 

throughout the country. The museum also 

sponsors a number of events, including the 

annual Austin Town festival, a reenactment of 

Texas’ colonial days. 

BRAZORIA 

COUNTY 

HISTORICAL 

MUSEUM 

❖ 

Above: Now serving as the Brazoria 

County Historical Museum, the 1897 

courthouse was remodeled to its 

“Spanish Mission” styling in 1927, 

leased to the Brazoria County 

Historical Commission for museum 

use in 1979, and restored to its 

present appearance. 

Below: Brazoria County Courthouse 

built in 1897. This photo was taken 

after 1899. 


BARTA 

BROTHERS 

PROPANE 

❖ 

Above: Emil and Joe Barta 

Bottom, left: A wide variety of 

appliances were available from Barta 

Brothers after the store was opened by 

Emil (shown) and Ruby, Joe and 

Martha Barta. 

Bottom right: A rare snowfall covers 

the area outside the Barta Brothers 

store in Damon. 

Founded in the early 1930s by Joe and Emil 

Barta, who had come to Damon several years 

earlier from Borden, Texas, Barta Brothers 

Propane actually began as an appliance store. 

The two brothers and their wives, Martha 

and Ruby, were operating a café in Damon, and 

needed a refrigerator, but the appliance factory 

would not sell fewer than two. Since one was all 

they needed, the Bartas sold the extra one, and 

soon began offering other appliances. 

Their appliance business soon outgrew the 

room at the café, so they made a bargain with a 

customer needing a new stove, trading the appliance 

for his vacant building and moving it to the 

business’ present location. A new building was 

erected in 1950 for their growing business. 

In 1938, the Bartas began piping homes in the 

Damon area for LP gas, which was sold by 

another company. In 1943, they purchased a 

truck and began selling the gas tanks and delivering 

gas, which they picked up from the Phillips 

Refinery in Old Ocean, Warren Petroleum in 

Chesterfield, and a small gas plant in back of 

Needville. 

Emil and Ruby Barta sold their interest in 

1978, and Joe and Martha continued to operate 

the business until 1986, when their children, 

Joe A. and Darlene Barta, Margaret and George 

Buchta, took over. 

“The business is basically the same as it has 

always been,” Margaret Buchta says. “We have 

four delivery trucks that service customers in 

Angleton, Brazoria, West Columbia, Old Ocean, 

Sweeny, across the Brazos River toward 

Rosharon, southern Fort Bend County and 

Eastern Wharton County, as well as in Damon.” 

“We used to go as far as Brenham. There were 

always relatives of customers who wanted us to 

install their LP gas system, as few companies did 

that when LP gas became a home product.” 

The family-owned and operated company 

also provides tanks, does gas piping, and sells 

some appliances. 

Family members among the eight employees 

include two of the Buchtas’ sons – with assistance 

from another when needed. 

Strong community ties are evident through 

participation by the family’s men in the volunteer 

fire department, and Margaret’s work as a volunteer 

for the West Columbia ambulance, as well as 

their church and other community activities. 

The business, which is located at 3623 Live 

Oak, Damon, telephone 409-742-3456, is open 

from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday, 

and 8 a.m. to noon on Saturday. 


PEARLAND 

ECONOMIC 

DEVELOPMENT 

CORPORATION 

The mission of the Pearland Economic 

Development Corporation (PEDC) is lofty: “To 

act as a catalyst, improving private investment 

in the local economy to benefit citizens, education, 

government and Pearland’s future.” 

The group’s primary focus is the global marketing 

and promotion of Pearland as a great 

place to live, work and play, by expanding the 

tax base through business and job retention, 

growth, and business and industry attraction. 

Pearland’s population, which has doubled since 

the 1990 census and is expected to double again in 

the next seven years, was primarily residential. 

Recognizing that residential property cannot 

sustain needed infrastructure improvements, 

area leaders spearheaded efforts to add a 

one-half cent city sales tax to support an active 

program of economic development and 

infrastructure improvements, from water and 

sewer projects to construction of Pearland’s 

first overpass. 

City officials unanimously backed the effort 

and called a sales tax election. Citizens 

approved the proposal on its first outing, even 

though most such taxes require two or more 

elections before passage. 

Working in cooperation with all areas of the 

community, including the city, schools, and utilities, 

as well as the Greater Houston Partnership 

and other economic groups and area cities, the 

PEDC has achieved remarkable results in 

attracting desirable business and clean industry 

to Pearland. 

“We have a fine location,” explains Glen 

Erwin, director of the PEDC. “You can leave 

Pearland and be in downtown Houston, NASA, 

or the Medical Center in just minutes. We have 

excellent schools and a safe environment with a 

good quality of life.” 

With the abundance of reasonably priced 

vacant land, the city was destined to grow. But 

leadership by the Pearland Economic 

Development Corporation since its formation in 

1995, along with the cooperative efforts by city 

officials to reduce bureaucratic red tape and 

attract desirable business, has made a tangible 

difference in the city’s present and its prospects 

for the future. 

Newsletters and media sources document 

this success, citing numerous new business 

partners employing those already living in the 

area and adding tax dollars to improve the quality 

of life for all Pearland area residents. 

❖ 

Above: Kemlon Products is Pearland’s 

first major high tech company. The 

72,000 square foot complex will 

immediately employ 180 full-time 

workers. The Pearland Economic 

Development Corporation sees such 

companies as the look of the future. 

Below: The Pearland Economic 

Development Corporation assisted a 

local company, Texas Honing, Inc., 

with a 25,000 square foot expansion, 

which doubled the company’s facility 

and increased its employment to 100 

people. 


ALVIN 

COMMUNITY 

COLLEGE 

❖ 

Top to bottom: 

ACC programs are supported by the 

latest technology, such as the newly 

equipped forensics crime lab. 

Communication students have the 

option to train in radio or television 

broadcasting. 

Alvin Community College is one of the 

few Microsoft Authorized Academic 

Training Partners in the area. 

One of the most recent additions to 

the campus is the Nolan Ryan Center 

for Continuing Education, which 

houses the Alvin Community College 

Business Resource Center. 

The creation of Alvin Junior College in 1948 

resulted from the efforts of a number of publicminded 

citizens whose forward thinking positioned 

Alvin as a leader in the community college 

movement. 

Originally located on the Alvin High School 

campus and administered by officials of the 

Alvin Independent School District, the college 

moved to its present location at 3110 Mustang 

Road in 1963. 

In 1976, the name of the institution was 

changed to Alvin Community College. 

Additional facilities were added in 1980, 1983 

and 1992 to accommodate a growing and 

diverse student body. From an enrollment of 

134 in 1948, Alvin Community College has 

grown to approximately 4,000 students. 

To help prepare students for the future, the 

College recently adopted a major technology plan 

which advances it to the forefront of training for 

the Information Age. New programs recently 

added to the curriculum include the Emergency 

Medical Technology program and a much-anticipated 

Process Technology degree. The College’s 

Distance Learning Program is expanding quickly 

to meet the needs of students seeking the convenience 

of classes outside the traditional schedule. 

Communications students have the option to 

train in radio or television broadcasting through 

KACC radio and KACC/TV, the campus radio and 

television stations. 

Alvin Community College has also become a 

major partner with area business and industry 

in workforce development and employee training 

through its Continuing Education programs. 

Its customized training is developed to meet the 

unique needs of participating companies. 

New additions to the campus include the 

Nolan Ryan Center for Continuing Education, 

which will house memorabilia from the career of 

baseball great Nolan Ryan. A state-of-the-art 

Women’s Softball field has been completed, and 

the College’s two-mile jogging track, a favorite 

with the community, has undergone renovation 

to an all-weather, asphalt track. The 114-acre 

campus includes 10 major buildings. 

Opening of the Pearland College Center in 

the fall of 1998, an event that signifies the 

College’s continued pattern of growth, was a feature 

of the 50th anniversary celebration of Alvin 

Community College. 


SULZER 

INTERMEDICS 

Founded 25 years ago by Brazoria County 

native Albert Beutel II, a grandson of the first 

general manager of Dow Chemical Company’s 

Texas Division, Intermedics began in Lake 

Jackson but soon moved to Freeport. As a former 

pacemaker salesman, Beutel knew there 

had to be a better way to produce pacemakers. 

And although he died at a young age, Beutel 

lived to see his company develop life-saving 

devices that were lighter, smaller and more reliable 

than the competition’s. 

In 1988, Intermedics was acquired by the 

Swiss industrial group, Sulzer Ltd. and became 

part of its Sulzer Medica division. The powerful 

combination of Texas know-how and Swiss 

money management permitted Intermedics to 

develop newer and more advanced pacemaker 

technology and to get started in the even newer 

field of implantable cardiac defibrillators 

(ICDs). Unlike pacemakers, which regulate a 

heart that beats too slowly, an ICD helps to regulate 

a heart that beats too fast and can, if necessary, 

deliver life-saving shock therapy. And 

since pacemakers and ICDs need pacing leads to 

transmit energy to the heart, Sulzer Intermedics 

makes them, too. Today, its patented revolutionary 

coated-wire technology has resulted in a 

world-beating line of leads. 

In 1992, the company completed the move 

of its world headquarters to Angleton, Brazoria 

County’s seat, where over 1,400 people now 

work full time. It is the city’s largest employer, 

with 34% of the workforce living in Angleton, 

86% residing in the county, and 100% of them 

coming to work each day at the imposing 

400,000 square foot facility, flanked by lush 

green grass, fish-laden ponds and flowing fountains. 

As the company gets ready to celebrate its 

25th birthday, Sulzer Intermedics is a force to be 

reckoned with, not only in Brazoria County, but 

everywhere in the world where an ailing heart 

needs expert treatment. 

From its humble beginnings in Lake Jackson, 

Texas, to its current position as a world leader in 

cardiac pacing with 14% of the global marketplace, 

Sulzer Intermedics has always been guided 

by one overriding principle: that this is 

where “Quality comes to life.” 

❖ 

Above: The Freeport location 

of Intermedics in 1980. 

Below: Sulzer Intermedics’ 

Angleton location. 


Abercrombie, James S., 49 

Adriance, John, 20, 31 

“Agricultural Eden”, 36 

Alabama, 23 

Alamo, The, 16 

Allen, A. C., 10 

Allen, J. K., 10 

Allen, John Kirby, 18 

Allison-Richey Suburban Garden Company, 36 

Almonte, Colonel Juan, 18 

Alvin, 32, 35, 37, 42, 59 

Alvin Aethaneum Club, 61 

Alvin Junior College, 35 

American Automobile Association, 54 

Anahuac, 12 

Anchor, 38 

Anderson, 23 

Anderson Ordnance Works, 23 

Angle, George, 39 

Angleton, 29, 37, 38, 40, 41, 42, 47, 54, 59, 67 

The Angleton Times, 40 

Appomattox, 23 

Archer, Dr. Branch T., 14 

Arkansas, 6 

Austin, 22 

Austin, James E. Brown, 9, 10 

Austin, John, 9, 10 

Austin, Moses, 5, 6, 38 

Austin, Stephen F., 5, 6, 8, 9, 14, 38 

A 

B 

BASF Corporation, 67 

Bates, Colonel Joseph, 23 

Battle of Gonzales, 14 

Battle of San Jacinto, 15, 38 

Bay City, 59 

Baylor University, 38 

Beaumont, 42 

Bee, Colonel Bernard E., 18 

Bell, James H., 22 

Bell, Josiah H., 6, 11 

Bird Island, 65 

Blue Dolphin Company, 61 

Brazoria, 7, 9, 10, 11, 17, 19, 21, 25, 27, 37, 40, 41, 42, 

43 

Brazoria County, 8, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 29, 30 

Brazoria County Airport, 66 

Brazoria County Courthouse, 34, 35 

Brazoria County Fair, 59 

Brazoria County Fair Association, 60 

Brazoria County Fairgrounds, 59 

Brazoria County Fat Stock and Fair Association, 59 

Brazoria County Historical Commission, 63 

Brazoria County Historical Museum, 35, 41, 63 

Brazoria County Planter, 20 

Brazoria Land and Cattle Company, 35 

Brazoria National Wildlife Refuge, 64 

Brazos Beef Packing Company, 29 

“Brazos de Dios”, 8 

Brazos River Authority, 61 

Brazos River Channel and Dock Company, 33 

Brazos River Lighthouse, 33 

Brazosport, 61 

Brazosport Center for the Arts and Sciences, 67 

Brazosport College, 67 

Brazosport Independent School District, 60 

Brazosport Junior College, 61 

Brenham, 38 

Brigham, Asa, 15 

Bryan, James, 9 

Bryan, Lewis R., Sr., 38, 39, 40 

Bryan Mound, 42 

Buccaneer Gas Company, 61 

Buffalo Bayou, 6, 7, 10, 18, 21 

Buffalo Bayou, Brazos & Colorado Railway, 21 

Byrom, J. S. D., 15 

C 

Camp Angleton, 59 

“Camp Chemical”, 58, 59 

Caney, 23 

Cannan, J. D., 40 

Cedar Lake, 8, 23, 65 

Channel & Dock Company, 38, 39, 40 

Chenango, 23 

Chenango Junction, 38 

Chocolate Bayou, 55, 61 

Christensen, S. M., 36 

Civil War, The, 21, 38 

Civilian Conservation Corps, 53 

Clemens State Farm, 29 

Clemens, W. C., 29 

Clute, 60 

Coast Artillery, The, 55 

Collins, Dr. R. N., 25 

Collinsworth, James, 15 

Colorado County, 6 

Colorado River, 5, 21 

Colquitt, O. B., 43 

Columbia, 7, 11, 17, 18, 19, 37 

Columbia Lakes Resort, Conference Center, and Country 

Club, 66 

Columbia Tap, The, 21, 38, 39 

Company A of the 3rd Texas Militia, 46 

Confederate States of America, 22 

Constitutional Advocate, 10 

“Consultation”, The, 14 

Corpus Christi, 46 

Creighton, James A., 63 

Damon’s Mound, 46, 48 

Dance, Daniel, 23 

Dance, George, 23 

Dance, Isaac, 23 

Dance, James Henry, 23 

Darrington Sugar Plantation, 29 

Day Land and Cattle Company, 35 

Department of the Brazos, 11 

Department of the Interior, 64 

DeWitt, Green, 12 

Dow Badische Company, 61 

Dow Chemical Company, 34, 54, 55, 59, 61, 66 

Dow Chemical Plant A, 54, 55 

Dow Chemical Plant B, 55, 58 

Dow Hotel, The, 54 

Dow Magnesium, 59 

Dunbar, T. J., 59 

East Columbia, 11, 23 

Eclipse, 9 

Eighth Texas Cavalry, 23 

Ellersly, 20, 21 

D 

Fannin, James Walker, 16 

Fayette County, 6 

Federation of Women’s Clubs, 61 

Fifteenth Amendment, 27 

Filisola, General Vicente, 16 

Fort Bend, 16 

Fort Bend County, 5, 21, 22 

Fort Velasco, 10, 11 

Fourteenth Amendment, 27 

Fourth Texas Volunteer Regiment, 23 

Freedmen’s Bureau, 27 

Freeport, 42, 43, 44, 54, 60, 61, 66, 67 

Freeport Sulphur Company, 43, 44, 54 

Front Street, 23 

G 

Galveston, 19, 21, 23, 24, 27 

Galveston County, 19 

Galveston Island, 6, 8, 23 

Goliad, 16 

Gonzales, 12, 14 

Grant, Ulysses S., 23 

Grimes County, 23 

Gulf, Colorado & Santa Fe Railroad, 35 

Gulf Conservation Association, 66 

Gulf Intracoastal Canal Association, 44 

Haller, Nathan, 27 

Harris County, 35 

Harrisburg, 7, 15, 21 

Harrison County, 19 

Harrison, Dan, 49 

Hensley, Joseph, 21 

Hensley, Robert, 21 

Hockley, Colonel George W., 18 

Hogg, Ima, 62 

Hogg, James S., 62 

Holley, Mary Austin, 65 

Hoskins Mound, 48 

Houston, 6, 10, 18, 21, 22, 23, 35, 38, 54, 61, 62 

Houston & Brazos Valley Railway, 44 

Houston & Great Northern Railroad, 39 

Houston, Sam, 14, 17, 18, 22 

Humble (Exxon), 48 

Illinois, 21 

Immigration Land Company of Des Moines, Iowa, 46 

International and Great Northern Railway, 31, 32 

Interstate Inland Waterway League, 44 

Intracoastal Canal, The, 21, 54, 59 

Iowa Colony, 32, 46 

E 

F 

H 

Jackson Place, 20 

Jackson, Abner, 20, 59 

Jackson, Andrew, 12, 18, 19 

Jones Creek, 8 

Jones, Randal, 8 

I 

J 

K 

Kansas, 29 

Karankawas, 7 

Kentucky, 23 

Kiber, Faustino, 38, 39, 40, 47 

Ku Klux Klan, The, 27 

INDEX 

L 

La Bahia, 6, 8 

Lavaca River, 6 

Lafitte, Jean, 8 

Lake Barbara, 60 

Lake Jackson, 20, 59 

Lake Jackson Sea Center Texas, 66 

Laura, 16, 17 

Lavino, E. J. & Company, 61 

Lee, Robert E., 23 

Lincoln, Abraham, 21, 22, 25 

Lively , 5 

Liverpool, 37 

Lost Lake, 65 

Louisiana, 6, 18, 20, 21, 23, 26 

Louisiana Purchase, The, 6 

Lowood Plantation, 37 

Lucas, F. A., 42 

M 

Maine, 27 

Mallinckrodt Medical, Inc., 67 

Manvel, 46, 48 

Marion, 11 

Masterson, A. R., 40 

Matagorda Bay, 6, 8 

Matagorda Island, 55 

Matamoros, 9, 16, 23 

McKinney, Thomas F., 11, 16, 19 

McNeel, John Greenville McNeel, 20 

McNeel, Sterling, 29 

Mexican Cession, 21 

Mexican Texas, 8 

Mexico City, 12 

Mills, David, 29 

Mills, Robert, 19, 21, 29 

Mississippi, 27 

Mississippi River, 8 

Mississippi Valley, 6 

Missouri, 9, 35 

Missouri, Kansas & Texas Railway, 44 

Moeller Ranch, 55 

Morgan, Alvin, 35 

Mud Island, 65 

Munson, Mordello S., 25, 31 

Museum of Natural Science, 67 

Mustang Bayou, 35 

N 

Nacogdoches, 6, 14 

Nalco Chemicals, 61 

Natchitoches, 6 

Neches River, 16 

New Deal, The, 53 

New Orleans, 5, 6, 8, 10, 12, 17, 67 

New York, 22, 27 

Nick’s Lake, 65 

North Africa Corps, 59 

North Carolina, 23 

O 

Old Ocean, 49 

Old Ocean Phillips 66 Sweeny Refinery, 59 

Onion Creek, 29 

Orozimbo, 18 

Oyster Creek, 8, 29 

P 

Patrick, George M., 16 

Patton, Captain William H., 17 

Pearl Harbor, 54 

Pearland, 32, 36, 46 

Pennsylvania, 22 

Perry, Emily Austin Bryan, 9 

Perry, James F., 9 

Perry, Stephen, 31 

Perry’s Landing, 23 

Phelps, Dr. James A. E., 17 

Plaquemine, 18 

Point Pleasant, 22 

Powell, Elizabeth, 16 

Powers, Betsy J., 28 

Quintana, 11, 19, 55, 65 

Q 

R 

Ramsey Farm, 29 

Rattlesnake Point, 65 

Red Barn Chemicals, 61 

“Redeemer” Democrats, 27 

Republic of Texas, 15, 19 

Retrieve Plantation, 29 

Richmond, 35 

Richwood, 60 

Rio Grande, 14 

Roche Vitamins, Inc., 67 

Roman Catholic Church, 9 

Roosevelt, Franklin Delano, 53, 54 

Rosenberg, 59 

Rosharon, 59 

Ruby, George T., 27 

Sabine River, 46 

Salt Lake, 65 

San Antonio, 6, 14, 15, 22 

San Antonio River, 8 

San Bernard National Wildlife Refuge, 65 

San Bernard River, 8, 16, 23 

San Felipe de Austin, 6 

San Jacinto, 16 

San Jacinto River, 6 

San Luis Pass, 23, 65 

Sandy Point, 37 

Santa Anna, General Antonio López de, 12, 14, 16, 17, 

18 

Sheridan, General Philip, 26 

Smith, George, 29 

Smith, Henry, 11, 14 

Smith, Morgan L., 20 

Southern Homestead Company, 36 

Spanish Texas, 6 

Spanish “Upper Louisiana”, 6 

Spindletop, 42 

St. Louis, 6 

Stafford’s Point, 21 

Sterling Oil and Refining Company, 49 

Sterling, Ross, 49 

Strobel, Abner, 20 

“Sugar Road,” The, 21 

Sulzer Intermedics, Inc., 67 

Surfside, 37 

Surfside Beach, 54 

Sweeney, John, 23 

Tampico, 9, 16 

Tarpon Inn, 43, 44 

Tennessee, 23, 27 

Terry, Colonel Benjamin Franklin, 22 

Texaco, 48 

Texas Centennial, 51 

Texas Committee for Public Safety, 22 

Texas Declaration of Independence, 15 

Texas Gazette and Brazoria Commercial Advertiser, 10 

Texas Historical Commission, 63 

Texas Land and Immigration Company, 39 

Texas Parks and Wildlife, 66 

The Texas Republican, 10 

Texas Revolution, 10 

The Texas State Gazette, 20 

Thirteenth Amendment, 26, 27 

Tonkawas, 7 

Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo 20 

Tuxpan Land Company, 25 

Tyndall-Wyoming Oil and Development Company, 42 

U. S. Bill of Rights, 9 

U. S. Coast Guard, 55 

U. S. Constitution, The, 25 

U. S. Fish & Wildlife Service, 64 

U. S. Signal Corps, 59 

Underwood, Ammon, 31 

United States Army Corps of Engineers, 33, 40, 44 

Urrea, General Jose, 16 

Varner, Martin, 62 

Varner's Creek, 11 

Varner-Hogg State Historical Park, 62 

Varner-Patton League, The, 17 

Velasco, 10, 11, 12, 17, 19, 22, 23, 37, 44, 54, 65 

Velasco Railway, 39 

Veracruz, 18, 25 

Victoria, 11 

Virginia, 14, 27 

S 

T 

U 

V 

W 

Waldeck, 20, 21 

Waller, Edwin, 15 

War of 1812, 6 

Washington County, 6 

Washington, D. C., 18, 25 

West Columbia, 11, 30, 42, 47, 48, 49, 62 

Wharton, 59 

Wharton, Captain John A., 22 

Wharton, William H., 14 

Williams, Samuel May, 11, 16, 19 

Wolf Lake, 65 

Women’s Study Club, 61 

World War I, 46, 59 

World War II, 46, 53 

Zacatecas, 12 

Zychlinski, W., 35 

Z

Historic Brazoria County

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