ABOUT BRAZORIA

BRAZORIA CIVIC CENTER/ MUSEUM 1933 BRAZORIA ELEMENTARY
Brazoria Elementary School was built in 1933 to replace 1912 school which was heavily damaged in the 1932 storm. It is the oldest public building still standing in what was once one of the most important towns in Texas. Brazoria Elementary complex is the last standing physical buildings erected by Brazoria Independent School District. CBISD has been merged with CBISD and no longer exists. They will never again build anything. The architectural design once common in Texas was built during the era of Civil Conservation Core (CCC), a Franklin D. Roosevelt program designed to relive poverty during the "Great Depression". There are very few of the schools of this design left in Texas. The physical building had early modifications to withstand hurricane forces which had destroyed all earlier Brazoria Schools and most historic building. It subsequently served as a Hurricane Shelter. Brazoria had many early schools destroyed by forces of nature. The only other site not destroyed by Nature was the temporary use of Brazoria County Courthouse. Brazoria School is the only school that survived five generations of students, making it a significant part of many lives.

MASONIC OAK PLEASANT STREET OLD TOWN BRAZORIA
On March 1, 1835, a meeting to organize the first Masonic Lodge in Texas was held under on oak tree in a wild peach grove near Brazoria. Present at the initial meeting were Dr. Anson Jones, John A. Wharton, J.P. Caldwell, Asa Brigham, James A. E. Phelps and Alexander Russell, plus possibly W. D. C. Hall and M. C. Patton. These first organizers selected such an unobtrusive place as a peach grove for their meeting because they felt it would be better to keep the project secret. As Anson Jones put it, "Every movement in Texas is watched with jealousy and mistrust by the Mexican government." A Mason once wrote about the tree, "While the tree was battered by storms and lightning, disease and insects, it fought a good fight against nature to survive� as Masons did during this trying period in our Texas history." A historical marker was placed under the tree in 1961.

J. I. STEWART HOME 1004 N. MARKET OLD TOWN BRAZORIA
This house was bought in Velasco in the early 1920's by the Methodist Church in Brazoria. It was reported to be a part of an old hotel in Velasco. It was loaded onto a barge and taken up the Brazos River, unloaded at the end of Market Street and taken to its present location. It was made then into a parsonage for the Methodist Church, which was located on the corner next to it. Mr. and Mrs. J. I. Stewart bought the house in the late 1940's and have done extensive remodeling.

HENRY HANSON HOME CORNER OF AUSTIN OLD TOWN BRAZORIA
This house is reputed to have been built in the 1860's, but the original owners cannot be ascertained. Mr. Henry Hanson bought the property in 1903. The house had been partially knocked off the blocks during the storm of 1900 and had been used as a barn for horse feed in the time after the hurricane. Mr. Hanson raised the house, repaired it and moved his family there. Both the 1913 and 1915 floods covered the bottom floor of the house, so Mr. Hanson raised it again to keep out water from future floods. Mrs. Edgar (Ruth) Johnson, one of Henry's Hanson's daughters, now lives in the house. Brazoria the sternwheeler Ocean hit a snag and sank at the Brazoria landing. A $5,000 reward for the goods from that ship was never claimed. The first steam vessel to arrive in Brazoria was Henry Austin's paddle wheeler Ariel which was designed by Robert Fulton.

HENRY SMITH STATUE
A Statue honoring the first Governor of the provisional state of Texas under Mexico constitution of 1824 is located in Brazoria. He was impeached because the Mexican government decided to not honor the 1824 constitution. Henry Smith, with Sam Houston formed the "War Party" to seek independence from Mexico. Mr. Smith taught school in Brazoria, was the first Secretary of the Treasury for the Republic of Texas and served as a member of the fifth congress of the Republic of Texas.

GULF PRAIRIE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH
The Perry family established the Gulf Prairie Presbyterian Church in 1877. The first sanctuary was destroyed in the 1910 hurricane. Mr. James Hanson, who was born on the Lake Jackson Plantation, built the second church. This building was moved to Durazno Plantation when the present church was built in 1950.

GULF PRAIRIE CEMETERY
This cemetery, originally part of Peach Point Plantation, was used by descendants of James Franklin Perry and his wife, Emily Austin Bryan Perry. It had been used since 1829. Stephen F. Austin was buried here in 1836, but his remains were moved to the State Cemetery in Austin in 1920. Austin's empty tomb sits next to the graves of James Franklin Perry and his wife, Emily, Stephen's sister.

STEPHEN F. AUSTIN'S OFFICE HWY 36 - JONES CREEK
Stephen F. Austin, himself, chose the site for the Peach Point Plantation. It was near Brazoria, located on the Brazos River, which afforded transportation, and good, rich soil. On December 27, 1831, from Brazoria, he wrote James F. Perry, who was living on Chocolate Bayou, near Alvin, "to remove all your stock to Peach Point, make corn there in the cane brake- let the work at Chocolate Bayou go and begin down here at once... The idea of a good house for this year must be abandoned, log cabins must do. Visitors can view some of the original wood beams through a small door in the wall. Only two rooms remain of the original large home, which faced south. The small Room reserved for his use is still intact. The rest of the house being destroyed by storms of the early 1900's. On the fence line are two sets of slave-built brick columns, which marked the entrance to the circular drive. A cistern, made of plantation brick, is near the house, and a second cistern across the highway is located near the ruins of James F. Perry's sugar mill, one of the first in Texas.

DURAZNO JONES CREEK
This is the place Stephen F. Austin planned to bring his fiancée, Mary Austin Holley. It was a part of a seven-and-one-third league grant from Mexico dated May 31, 1828. He planned to deed 200 acres to Mary. She identified it in her 1835-38 diary as the "paradise on earth" where she and Stephen would build their home. His death in 1836 prevented fruition of their plan. In 1840, William Joel Bryan married Lavinia Perry and settled at Durazno Plantation, which would become one of Texas' earliest and most important plantations. It produced cotton, cattle, and sugar. Durazno, the Spanish word for "peach", was named for the abundant growth of wild peach in the area. Durazno remained in the Bryan family until 1928, when it passed into the Stringfellow family, then to Mrs. Stringfellow's nephew, Percival Beacroft, Jr. The present house, constructed in 1909, incorporates in its walls the original walls of the kitchen and plantation office. The main entrance, facing south toward the gate, was moved to the north facade.

THE BRAZOS RIVER
All during the 1800's river traffic was a principal form of transportation in Texas. The Brazos River offered 250 miles of navigable water, allowing it to become one of the primary avenues of transportation for Texas. River boats made regularly scheduled stops at the Brazoria Landing for many years. These boats carried both people and goods to ports on the river. Such boats as the Yellow Stone, Laura, Brazos, and the Alice Blair were regular visitors to

THE MCCROSKEY HOUSE CR 316
The McCroskey House, a restored log cabin, is said to date back to 1824, making it the oldest structure still standing in Brazoria County. It is a remarkable piece of early Texas architecture and construction. Its walls are of huge, hand-hewn cedar logs-many of them a foot square-cut and hauled from nearby Cedar Lake. It was first constructed as two large single rooms on each side of the classic "dogtrot" (a large, open center hallway), with brick fireplaces on the east and west ends. Subsequent owners boxed in the dogtrot and divided the two larger rooms, so the cabin is now a large, five room, and single story structure. The cabin's first occupant and alleged builder was John McCroskey, a hide tanner, who came with Stephen F. Austin's first band of Texas colonists. By building and occupying a house in the grant, McCroskey was awarded, by the Mexican government a league of land, or something over 4,000 acres. Then down over the years, the cabin passed through a series of other owners including Oliver Jones, Robert Townes, Joseph and Charles Reese, Stephen Winston, and Major Asa Stratton.

LEVI JORDAN PLANTATION FM 521
Levi Jordan, who fought in the War of 1812, was an orphan. Yet, after coming to Texas with one hundred slaves in the late 1840's, he came to be regarded as the third richest man in what would become Brazoria County. He and his wife, Sarah Stone Jordan, lived nearby while the plantation home was being constructed. The land had been bought for a little less than $9,000.00 for S.M. Williams. Construction by slave labor began in 1848 and was completed in 1851. It was made from oak timbers cut in the forest, and from lumber which had to be pre-cut and shipped first to Velasco, then up the San Bernard, since there was not a sawmill in the area. The Jordan Plantation is unique in the preservation of artifacts. Heavy flooding in 1913 sealed everything in the slave-quarter area under a layer of silt. Only Thomas Jefferson's Plantation in Virginia is so rich in the artifacts of the early period.