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    Sugar Land
    Sugar Land
    Sugar Land
    Ebook196 pages1 hour

    Sugar Land

    By The City of Sugar Land

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    About this ebook

    Sugar Land’s earliest settlers arrived in the 1820s with Stephen F. Austin, “the Father of Texas.” Originally named Oakland Plantation, the area was planted with cotton, corn, and sugar cane, and by 1843, it had its own sugar mill. Benjamin Franklin Terry, famous for leading Terry’s Texas Rangers, and William Jefferson Kyle purchased the plantation in 1852 and were the first to name it Sugar Land. Col. Edward H. Cunningham, a Confederate veteran, later bought the property and built the first sugar refinery as well as a railroad to transport cane from nearby plantations. Under his ownership, a fledgling town emerged that included a store, post office, paper mill, acid plant, meat market, boardinghouse, and depot. The town, refinery, and surrounding 12,500 acres were acquired by Isaac H. Kempner and William T. Eldridge in 1908. Their vision resulted in Imperial Sugar, a thriving business and company town.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArcadia Publishing
    Release dateSep 18, 2012
    ISBN9781439639658
    Sugar Land
    Author

    The City of Sugar Land

    The historic images and vintage photographs for this book appear courtesy of Imperial Sugar and private citizens of Sugar Land, offering a unique look back at Sugar Land�s evolution from a remote company town to master-planned urban city, recently named one of America�s Best Places to Live.

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      Book preview

      Sugar Land - The City of Sugar Land

      more.

      INTRODUCTION

      Sugar Land is a city with a rich history, built by those with a tenacious spirit that seized opportunity and melded it with a commitment to quality and service to others. Its roots originate with the first 300 settlers brought to Texas in the 1820s by Stephen Fuller Austin, the Father of Texas. The grant negotiated with the Mexican government allowed Austin to offer 4,605 acres to each family at a cost of 12.5¢ an acre. Rich land, water, abundant wildlife—and later the railroads—were critical in Sugar Land’s development.

      During the 16th century, Spanish explorers discovered a waterway stretching 840 miles from the northern Texas plains to the Gulf of Mexico. Named Los Brazos del Dios (the Arms of God), today it is known as the Brazos River. Native Karankawa Indians followed the Brazos, hunting and gathering food. Their remains have been unearthed near the Sugar Land Police Station on State Highway 6.

      Austin’s first colony extended from the Lavaca River on the west to the Trinity River on the east. The Gulf of Mexico served as its southern boundary, and the Old San Antonio Road, making its way from San Antonio to Nacogdoches, was the boundary on the north.

      Austin chose five leagues of land for his personal homestead, which extended from present-day Harlem Road, east of Richmond, almost to Eldridge Road, just east of the Imperial Sugar refinery in Sugar Land. Each league was about a mile wide and extended from the Brazos River northward about 7 miles to include the fertile Oyster Creek watershed. Modern-day Sugar Land is within the prime real estate Austin chose for himself.

      Austin decided to settle in San Felipe, relinquishing his leagues to others—Jane Wilkins, Jesse Cartwright, Mills Battle, and Alexander Hodge. The fifth and eastern-most league, where the company town of Sugar Land developed, went to Samuel May Williams.

      Williams never lived there. He instead settled in Galveston in 1837 and sold the league to his brother Nathaniel in 1838. Another brother, Matthew, managed the plantation for Nathaniel, making his home there and calling it Oakland Plantation. Within a few years, the market for sugarcane increased. In 1843, Matthew installed a mill to grind his cane on the same site where the Imperial Sugar refinery now stands.

      Samuel and Nathaniel sold the property after Matthew died in 1852. Two Brazoria landowners, Benjamin Franklin Terry and William Jefferson Kyle, purchased the land.

      Terry and Kyle immediately renamed the area Sugar Land. They increased the size of their holdings by buying up adjoining plantations. Their 12,500-acre Sugar Land plantation became one of the largest in Texas. They convinced the owners of the Buffalo Bayou, Brazos, and Colorado Railway (BBB&C) to bend their tracks past their sugar mill and cotton gin, a major accomplishment credited for the future growth of Sugar Land.

      In August 1861, Terry departed his beloved Sugar Land to lead the Confederate regiment called Terry’s Texas Rangers. Colonel Terry was killed leading his first charge near Woodsonville, Kentucky, the place where he had been born 40 years prior. A large funeral ceremony, attended by dignitaries throughout the state, took place in Sugar Land.

      Kyle died in 1864 at age 61, apparently worn out from the effects of the war. His brother Robert managed the property for the Kyle and Terry heirs.

      The government appropriated the cotton crop of 1865. Planters were not able to raise a crop the following year. Productivity came to a virtual halt, and land values declined dramatically. Many landowners abandoned their properties or sold them for as low as 20¢ on the dollar. However, the Kyle and Terry Plantation survived the downturn.

      Col. Littleberry Ambrose Ellis began acquiring acreage just west of the Terry and Kyle Plantation in 1868. Col. Edward Hall Cunningham entered into a partnership with him in 1875 to bring the state’s convict lease system to Ellis’s 5,300-acre plantation, Sartartia.

      Cunningham began purchasing the neighboring Terry and Kyle properties and joined with Ellis to build a 600-ton raw sugar mill near the intersection of today’s U.S. Highway 90A and Texas 6. Called the Imperial Mill, it was operated with leased convicts.

      In the 1890s, Cunningham constructed the first sugar refinery in Texas to process the thousands of acres of cane harvested on his vast acreage. He became known as the Texas Sugar King. He added convict quarters just north and adjacent to his mill and refinery in the horseshoe bend of Oyster Creek.

      Cunningham had increased his holdings to 12,500 acres and built a railroad and a semblance of a town, where mostly drifters, vagrants, and sailors off Galveston ships sought work during the short sugarcane harvesting and crushing season.

      By 1903, Cunningham suffered a series of setbacks, eventually placing his Sugar Land holdings into receivership. Refinery construction was delayed when part of his heavy machinery was lost at sea. Then severe floods in 1898 and 1899 destroyed crops and damaged property and a three-story boiling house burned down. Next, the Great Storm of 1900 ripped through the area wreaking havoc and destruction. Once the refinery was up and running, he began importing raw sugar from Cuba to operate it year round, but lacked sufficient credit to continue the practice. The aging Cunningham would never recover financially.

      Meanwhile, Isaac Herbert Kempner Sr. (Ike Kempner), of Galveston, and William Thomas Eldridge (W. T. Eldridge), of Eagle Lake, partnered in 1905 to form the Imperial Sugar Company. Their purpose was to purchase Ellis’s neighboring Sartartia Plantation. At the time, Gov. Thomas M. Campbell was in the process of centralizing the state’s prison system and phasing out the convict lease system. His desire was to purchase the Ellis and Cunningham properties to create a special prison unit that would provide foodstuffs and other goods contributing to the self-sufficiency of the statewide prison system.

      After lengthy negotiations, an agreement was reached that Kempner and Eldridge would sell the Sartartia Plantation to the state. In return, Kempner and Eldridge would acquire the failing Cunningham properties and

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