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Hempstead, Texas

Everything Hempstead is known for

5 songs mention this city 1 artist from here

RoadyGoat plays music like this when you drive through Hempstead. It's free on iPhone, and full songs play through Apple Music.

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Music in Hempstead

Songs About Hempstead

Waller County Jail
MC Sante
98%
"Waller County Jail"
Hempstead
Jed Clark
81%
"TITLE"
Devil’s Work
Joyner Lucas
7%
"Ain't no justice for Sandra Bland, we up like the ceiling fan"
Hempstead Highway
Steve Gilbert
7%
"Hempstead Highway"
Hell You Talmbout
Janelle Monáe
"Sandra Bland, say her name"

Artists From Hempstead

C
Cole Annoot
country

Rivers & Roads in Song near Hempstead

Songs written about the waterways and highways that run near Hempstead.

Brazos River 43 songs Interstate 10 36 songs US Route 90 9 songs Texas Colorado River 6 songs Interstate 45 8 songs Texas State Highway 71 2 songs

Musical Heritage

Buster Pickens - Hempstead blues pianist RoadyGoat

1916

Edwin 'Buster' Pickens, born in Hempstead on June 3, 1916, was one of the last of the Texas barrelhouse blues pianists. In the 1930s he was part of the Santa Fe Group, pianists who rode the Santa Fe freight lines between the sawmill and oil-camp joints of east Texas. He backed singer Texas Alexander on his final recording session in 1950, cut a solo album in Houston in 1960 with tracks like 'Santa Fe Train' and 'Rock Island Blues,' and appeared on several Lightnin' Hopkins albums in the early 1960s, including Walkin' This Road by Myself. He died in Houston in 1964.

History of Hempstead

Six-Shooter Junction RoadyGoat

Welcome to 'Six-Shooter Junction,' once one of the most dangerous towns in Texas. The Houston and Texas Central Railway reached here in 1858 and made Hempstead a distribution center, and after the Civil War the place filled with everything that can go wrong at a crossroads: federal troops enforcing Reconstruction, disbanded Confederates, newly freed Black Texans finding their footing in a hostile world, and a saloon on every promising corner. But the nickname stuck for a reason that outlasted Reconstruction. For decades, disputes here got settled with a pistol — arguments among Klansmen, Radical Republicans, Greenbackers, Populists and prohibitionists. In 1875 the Radical Republicans held two conventions in town. And in 1905 it all came to a head inside the Waller County courthouse, when a meeting with prohibitionists turned into a two-minute gunfight that left four men dead, including U.S. Congressman John Pinckney and his brother Tom. As you pass through the quiet downtown today, it's hard to picture the tension that earned Hempstead its infamous name.

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Hempstead's Six Shooter Junction RoadyGoat

1870

Today Hempstead is the Waller County seat and proud watermelon country, but for about fifty years this town carried a rougher name: Six-Shooter Junction. It grew up where the railroads crossed, an hour northwest of Houston, and the trains poured in crowds, money, hot tempers, and trouble. Folks here had a habit of settling their arguments with the pistols on their hips, and there was never any shortage of things to argue about. Right after the Civil War, just controlling the county courthouse and its offices was a running fight between Republicans and Democrats, decided about as often by gunfire as by ballots. Then came the Greenbackers, debt-strapped farmers who wanted the government to keep printing paper money, betting that cheaper dollars and a little inflation would make their mortgages and crop loans easier to pay off. After them rose the Populists, the great farmers' revolt of the eighteen nineties, furious at the railroads and the banks for squeezing them with high freight rates and low cotton prices, and demanding the government step in and rein the railroads back. And hottest of all was the war between the drys and the wets, the fight over whether to outlaw the saloon, which every Texas town voted on for itself and nobody took lightly. That last one turned Hempstead into a killing ground in nineteen oh five, when a crowd packed the courthouse over a prohibition petition, the guns came out, and four men died, including a sitting United States congressman who was unarmed and only trying to break up the fight.

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Hempstead: The Science Behind the Sweetest Cargo RoadyGoat

1858

Hempstead was once one of America's watermelon capitals, and for good reason: into the 1940s it was the single largest shipper of watermelons in the whole United States. People still call it the Watermelon Capital of Texas. But that success was never just rich soil. It was a chain of problems solved. Growers had to manage irrigation, pick the right varieties, and judge to the day when each melon was ripe. Then came the hard part: moving thousands of pounds of a fruit that spoils fast, before it could rot. That is why the town grew up around the railroad. When the Houston and Texas Central reached Hempstead in 1858, it turned a farm town into a shipping point that could fling Texas melons to markets across the country. And the science never stopped. Today researchers measure a melon's sweetness with a beam of light, and breed new varieties for flavor, nutrition, and resistance to disease. The humble watermelon is one of the most engineered fruits you will ever eat.

Drennan, Lillie Elizabeth McGee

1928

Lillie Elizabeth Drennan, the first licensed female truck driver and trucking-firm owner in Texas (and the United States), was born at John Sealy Hospital in Galveston, Texas, on January 9, 1897. Her mother, about whom little is known, gave her up for adoption; at three weeks of age Lillie became the foster daughter of Francis Carolyn (Fannie, Grannie) Nichols McGee of Hempstead. Lillie married William Barney Jackson on December 18, 1912, when she was fifteen years old; the couple had a son but were divorced in June 1914. On July 17, 1917, Lillie married Willard Ernest Drennan; this couple, who had no children, were divorced in April 1929. Lillie married S. B. Boulware on October 31, 1931; they had no children and received a divorce in April 1943. Lillie dropped out of school in the fifth grade. At the age of thirteen she obtained employment as a telephone operator; by the time she was twenty-two, however, she had lost most of her hearing ability, probably as the result of scarlet fever suffered some years earlier; she wore a hearing aid throughout most of her adult life. She and her second husband started a trucking business in March 1928, primarily to take advantage of an oil boom near Hempstead. They purchased their first truck, a used, open-cab Model-T Ford, which her husband drove. As their business rapidly prospered, they bought a second truck, a closed-cab Chevrolet driven by Lillie. Later they added other trucks and hired additional drivers. After their divorce in 1929, Lillie became the sole owner of the Drennan Truck Line and, until 1934, a soft-drink bottling plant in Hempstead that the couple had also acquired. Lillie received her commercial truck-driver's license in 1929 after the Railroad Commission began supervising the motor-freight business in the state. Commission examiners appeared reluctant to grant her a license, contending that her hearing impairment would make her a safety risk. But Lillie perceived sex bias and effectively argued her case, based on her driving record: "If any man can beat my record I'll just get out of here." She operated the Drennan Truck Line for nearly twenty-four years and withstood opposition from unfair competitors, dishonest shipping clerks, and others who believed that a woman lacked the fortitude to manage a trucking company. She and her drivers, most of whom were black men, hauled oilfield equipment, explosives, soft drinks, and general freight throughout East Texas, braving mud and ice. On occasions Lillie drove over forty-eight hour stretches with virtually no sleep or rest, but apparently she never had an accident. Joe Carrington, a well-known insurance carrier for Texas trucking companies, wrote in 1946 that he knew of "no other truck owner" who enjoyed a safety record comparable to Lillie's. Carrington also praised the excellent reputation of her other drivers. Lillie received safety awards from the Railroad Commission and the Texas Motor Transportation Association. She also demonstrated her driving skills as a guest participant on a Texas Motor Transport Association "Roadeo" obstacle course at the state fairgrounds in Dallas in September 1950. Lillie Drennan achieved national fame for her colorful personality. Attired in her khaki pants and shirt, laced work boots, and a ten-gallon hat, she placed a loaded revolver by her side when she drove, although she never used it. She insisted upon training every driver she hired; she sometimes kicked her employees in the seat of their pants and threatened, in her foghorn voice, to "pistol-whip" or "brain them with an iron bar" for violating her rules. When criticized for her cursing, she responded, "Me and God have an understanding." During World War II the United States Army praised Lillie's success in its recruiting campaign to attract women truck drivers for the quartermaster corps. During her long career Lillie received media attention in periodicals, newspapers, and radio broadcasts. In 1943 she visited Hollywood, where the L

Tsha Handbook →

Groce, Jared Ellison

1822

Jared Ellison Groce, planter, public official, and the wealthiest settler in Stephen F. Austin 's colony, was born in Halifax County, Virginia, on October 12, 1782, the son of Jared Ellison and Sarah (Sheppard) Groce. In 1802 he moved to South Carolina, where he acquired valuable property and married Mary Ann Waller, daughter of Texas pioneer Leonard Waller, on August 29, 1804. Later that year he moved to Lincoln County, Georgia, where he purchased a large estate. There he became a delegate to the convention that drafted the Georgia constitution. After his wife's death in 1814, Groce moved to Alabama and established a settlement known as Fort Groce. He heard of Austin's colonization scheme in 1821 and decided to move to Texas. With the aid of some fifty wagons and ninety slaves, Groce and his effects reached the Brazos River in January 1822. He began constructing a homestead, which soon became Bernardo Plantation , on the east bank four miles south of the site of present-day Hempstead. In recognition of the extensive property that he had brought with him, he was granted title to ten leagues of land by the Mexican government, on July 29, 1824. These original holdings were soon augmented by shrewd purchases. It is said, for example, that in 1828 Groce acquired the league on which Courtney was founded in exchange for a riding pony and a bolt of cloth. In 1822 he cultivated what may have been the first cotton crop in the Austin colony and in 1825 constructed one of the earliest gins in Texas, on the Brazos River, now in southwestern Grimes County. By the end of 1822 he had built a large house at Bernardo on a hill overlooking the Brazos near the mouth of Fish Pond Creek; here he resided until 1833, when the malarial environment of the Brazos bottoms compelled him to divide his estate among his children and move several miles northward to Wallace Prairie, now in Grimes County. Here, accompanied by twenty slaves, on an open hill in a three-league tract of land on the east bank of the Brazos, Groce constructed a new home known as Groce's Retreat . The establishment included a primitive sawmill for processing logs hewn from nearby junipers. During the 1830s, in order to defend his home against occasional Indian raids, Groce armed a company of his slaves. He had been a participant in the affairs of the Austin colony since 1824, when he chaired a committee to petition the Mexican congress for the protection of slave property in Texas. He actively opposed the Fredonian Movement and placed his ferry, wagons, teams, and slaves at the disposal of Col. Mateo Ahumada as he marched to Nacogdoches to suppress the uprising in 1827 ( see FREDONIAN REBELLION ). Groce was selected as a delegate from the District of Viesca (later Milam County) to the Convention of 1832 , where he opposed the resolution seeking independence for Texas and chaired a committee to draft petitions for tariff reduction. He was returned to the Convention of 1833 , where he again participated actively. But whatever the grounds of his earlier reluctance, by 1836 Groce had espoused revolution. Though he was crippled in both arms and unfit for military duty, he is reported to have personally outfitted five men for service in the Texas army. The draft of the Texas Declaration of Independence was completed before March 2 by George C. Childress at Groce's Retreat, whence it was returned to Washington-on-the-Brazos for ratification. Between March 18 and March 21, 1836, the Retreat served as the temporary capital of the Republic of Texas , while the interim government of David G. Burnet stopped there en route from Washington to Harrisburg. In April before the battle of San Jacinto , Gen. Sam Houston and his army camped on the west bank of the Brazos opposite Bernardo, which Groce's son, Leonard Waller Groce , had inherited. For two weeks Leonard Groce supplied the army with provisions, shelter, and medical attention. After San Jacinto, Groce's Retreat was among the venues considered

Tsha Handbook →

Hannay, Allen Burroughs

1915

Allen Hannay, lawyer and judge, was born in Hempstead, Texas, on February 14, 1892, the son of Robert Edwards and Katherine Donaldson (Allen) Hannay. His father was a United States attorney and served as state attorney in six counties. Hannay finished high school at the age of fifteen, attended Texas A&M, and graduated from the University of Texas law school when he was twenty-one. He became the youngest county judge in the nation at the age of twenty-three. He enlisted in officers' training school as a private in World War I , supervised the Hempstead draft board, and taught beginning pilots military aeronautics. In 1918 he moved to Houston and became a law partner of Maurice Hirsch . In 1930 Hannay was appointed judge of the 113th Civil Court. President Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed him to the federal bench on August 12, 1942, where he served as chief judge of the Southern District from 1954 to 1962. He relinquished this position when required to do so at the age of seventy, but continued presiding over cases. When he died at the age of ninety-one he was the oldest active federal judge in the nation. Hannay's judicial rulings were generally on the conservative side, but he became a favorite of environmental groups when he ruled that Armco Steel Company had to cease polluting the Houston Ship Channel . He was also involved in parts of Muhammed Ali's draft evasion trial (1967). In another case he demonstrated his fairness and commitment to equal rights when he ordered a Channelview school to allow a divorced female student to participate in extracurricular activities. Besides his illustrious judicial career, Hannay was a member of the Houston Buffs , a professional baseball team. He met Frances Johnson in Columbus, Ohio, during World War I. They were married on July 16, 1918, and had two children. Judge Hannay died on October 22, 1983.

Tsha Handbook →

Waller, Edwin

1835

Plantation Home of Edwin Waller (1800-1883). Member of the consultation in 1835. Signer of the Texas Declaration of Independence. First mayor of the City of Austin. Member of the Secession Convention in 1861. On this property, acquired during the Republic, he resided from 1846 for many years.

Historical Marker →

Jacob E. Freeman

1841

In response to the political, social and economic turmoil in Texas and the South after the Civil War, the federal government enacted the Reconstruction Act on March 2, 1867. Many local and state officials were removed from office and a constitutional convention convened in 1868 with ten African Americans elected to serve. The 12th Legislature met in 1870-1871 and was composed of 14 elected African American members. Amid struggles and violence, African American legislators continued to serve Texas. Among them was Jacob E. Freeman who served as a representative from Waller, Fort Bend and Wharton counties. Freeman was born a slave in Alabama around 1841 and came to Texas when he was eleven. He assisted his master in the Confederate army during the Civil War and, by 1873, was a mechanic in the Hempstead area and had served on a Waller County grand jury. In July 1873, Freeman served on the Colored Men’s Convention where attendees discussed political, civic and economic rights of minorities. As a member of the Republican Party, Freeman won a seat in the Texas House of Representatives in 1874 for the 14th Legislature where he served on the Penitentiary Committee. He was again elected to the 16th Legislature in 1879. In 1878, Freeman campaigned for the Greenback Party candidate for Governor, unsuccessfully ran for the Legislature as a People’s Party candidate in 1886 and campaigned for a gubernatorial candidate in 1892. Jacob E. Freeman and other 19th century African American legislators helped safeguard the rights of Texas and its Black citizens against tremendous odds and a sometimes hostile political climate. 175 Years of Texas Independence * 1836 - 2011

Historical Marker → · 4.9 mi away

Trooper Russell Lynn Boyd Memorial Highway

1983

Honors Highway Patrol Trooper Russell Lynn Boyd, Texas DPS Hempstead, killed October 11, 1983, during a traffic stop on State Highway 6 near Hempstead by Eliseo Hernandez Moreno. The honorary highway is on US-290; exact endpoints unconfirmed (single Facebook-post source as of 2026-05-13).

Historical Marker →

Things to Do in Hempstead

quirky 20.1 mi away
The Underground City Beneath the Streets

After fires ravaged Brenham three times in a decade the town did something no other Texas city had attempted. They built twenty-seven underground cisterns…
historical 20.1 mi away
The Night Federal Troops Burned Brenham

In 1866 Union soldiers occupying Brenham during Reconstruction clashed with local residents and set fire to an entire city block. The flames consumed…
quirky 20.1 mi away
From Cotton Gin to Ice Cream Empire

In 1907 a group of Washington County dairy farmers converted an abandoned cotton gin into a creamery and started making butter. Ice cream production began in…
quirky 20.4 mi away
The Blues Capital of Texas

Mance Lipscomb picked cotton all week and picked guitar all weekend on the farms outside Navasota for decades before anyone beyond Grimes County knew his name.…
historical 20.6 mi away
The Explorer Who Died Lost

On March 19 1687 the French explorer Rene-Robert Cavelier Sieur de La Salle was walking through the bottomlands near the Navasota River when one of his own men…
food 19.0 mi away
Blue Bell Creameries

Tour the home of Texas' beloved ice cream in tiny Brenham. Free samples.
historical 19.9 mi away
Where Texas Declared Independence

Just outside Brenham lies the town of Independence where Texas declared its freedom from Mexico in 1836. Washington County became the cradle of Texas liberty…
historical 20.1 mi away
The Summer the Fever Came

In 1867 just one year after Union troops burned part of Brenham a yellow fever epidemic swept through town. The mosquito-borne disease killed dozens and…

Everything Near Hempstead

606 stories, landmarks & places within ~20 miles — the nearest 200 are listed here — the same local lore RoadyGoat plays as you drive through.

  • Six-Shooter Junction

    Welcome to 'Six-Shooter Junction,' once one of the most dangerous towns in Texas. The Houston and Texas Central Railway reached here in 1858 and made Hempstead a distribution center, and after the Civil War the place…

  • Hempstead's Six Shooter Junction

    Today Hempstead is the Waller County seat and proud watermelon country, but for about fifty years this town carried a rougher name: Six-Shooter Junction. It grew up where the railroads crossed, an hour northwest of…

  • Hempstead: The Science Behind the Sweetest Cargo

    Hempstead was once one of America's watermelon capitals, and for good reason: into the 1940s it was the single largest shipper of watermelons in the whole United States. People still call it the Watermelon Capital of…

  • Hempstead, TX

    Hempstead, Texas. It's easy to drive through and think it's just another quiet spot on the map, but this Waller County seat has seen its share of history. Take Lillie Drennan — back in 1929, she became the first woman…

  • The Watermelon Capital of Texas

    You might see a sign welcoming you to the 'Watermelon Capital of Texas,' and it's no empty boast. Hempstead earned that title in the railroad age, when the Houston and Texas Central made this town a shipping point for…

  • The Iron Compass: Engineering a Town

    The very existence of Hempstead is a story of 19th-century transportation engineering. Before the town, there was only a plan on paper at the Houston and Texas Central Railway. Engineers and surveyors, using little more…

  • How to Measure Sweetness With a Beam of Light

    Hempstead shipped more watermelons than anywhere else in the United States into the 1940s, so knowing which melons were sweet was the whole game. Here is the trick the industry uses to judge it, and it sounds like…

  • The Red Inside a Watermelon Beats a Tomato

    People call Hempstead the Watermelon Capital of Texas, so here is what is actually packed inside the fruit that earned it the title. That deep red inside a ripe watermelon is not just color, it is chemistry, and it is…

  • The Confederate Camp

    During the Civil War, Hempstead became a military hub for the Confederacy. On Colonel Leonard Groce's plantation just east of town, near Liendo, the army set up Camp Groce in 1862 as a training camp. Then in 1863 it was…

  • The Genetic Trick Behind a Seedless Watermelon · 0.1 mi

    The watermelons that made Hempstead the Watermelon Capital of Texas are far more engineered than the ones early farmers grew, and the seedless melon proves it. A seedless watermelon is not found in nature, it is a…

  • Growing a Fruit That Is Almost All Water · 0.1 mi

    Every July since 1990, Hempstead throws a Watermelon Festival, a nod to the fruit that made the town famous, and growing that fruit is a stranger job than it looks. A watermelon is about ninety-two percent water, which…

  • First United Methodist Church of Hempstead · 0.3 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the site of the First United Methodist Church of Hempstead. Methodism arrived in town around 1857, and the congregation purchased its first building for church use by 1859. The church has moved and…

Show all 200 nearby places
  • Where the Last Confederate Army Came Apart · 0.5 mi

    Hempstead and Camp Groce bookend the Confederacy in Texas: the camp helped raise Confederate regiments in 1862, and in the spring of 1865 the same ground saw the Confederate army of the West come apart. As the war…

  • Trooper Russell Lynn Boyd Memorial Highway · 0.5 mi · Historical Marker

    Honors Highway Patrol Trooper Russell Lynn Boyd, Texas DPS Hempstead, killed October 11, 1983, during a traffic stop on State Highway 6 near Hempstead by Eliseo Hernandez Moreno. The honorary highway is on US-290; exact…

  • Hempstead, C.S.A. · 0.5 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past Hempstead, a major Civil War hub for Texas. This town was a powerhouse, with railroad, troop training, and manufacturing supplying the Confederate Army. Camp Groce here even became a prisoner of war…

  • Home to sculptress Elisabet Ney · 0.5 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving through Waller County, Texas, organized in 1873 and named for Edwin Waller, a signer of the Texas Declaration of Independence and the first mayor of Austin. This land was home to the historic Groce…

  • Waller County · 0.5 mi · Historical Marker

    Created from Austin and Grimes counties, April 28, and organized Aug. 16, 1873. Named for Edwin Waller (1800-1861), a signer of the Texas Declaration of Independence, 1836; Postmaster General, Texas Republic; First…

  • Buster Pickens - Hempstead blues pianist · 0.5 mi

    Edwin 'Buster' Pickens, born in Hempstead on June 3, 1916, was one of the last of the Texas barrelhouse blues pianists. In the 1930s he was part of the Santa Fe Group, pianists who rode the Santa Fe freight lines…

  • Diemer Road and the Brazos Bottom Farm Family · 0.5 mi

    Out here near Pattison and Brookshire, Diemer Road carries a name you won't find in any history of speakers or generals, just a hardworking farm family that helped settle the rich Brazos River Bottom. The road is named…

  • Buller Road and the Family That Farmed Pattison · 0.5 mi

    Buller Boulevard and the Buller Road that crosses it, both near Pattison, aren't named for a politician or a war hero, but for the Buller family, early pioneer settlers and landowners who farmed and developed the rural…

  • Waller County Post Offices · 0.5 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving through Waller County, where for over a century, post offices were the heart of rural life. Often found in homes or general stores, these vital links connected isolated settlements, serving as community…

  • The Captain Texas Almost Forgot to Count · 0.6 mi

    Under the live oaks of Hempstead Cemetery lies a man who helped win Texas its independence and then nearly got left off the books for it. Alfred Henderson Wyly was born in Virginia back in eighteen oh eight, and he…

  • 'Little Old Hempstead' Went Undefeated to Arlington · 0.6 mi

    Hempstead has played football since the late 1950s and has reached exactly one state championship game: 2011. Ricky Sargent's Bobcats opened with a 24-23 escape against Stafford, then went 10-0 in the regular season,…

  • Tied at Halftime in Cowboys Stadium · 0.6 mi

    Hempstead and Melissa were tied 7-7 at halftime of the 2011 Class 2A Division I state championship game at Cowboys Stadium, before 8,435 people. Hempstead's only first-half points came from defensive back Tribete Smith,…

  • Captain Alfred H. Wyly · 0.6 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the resting place of Captain Alfred H. Wyly. He was there with Sam Houston at the Battle of San Jacinto, April 21, 1836, commanding a volunteer company. That decisive battle secured Texas…

  • Hempstead High School · 0.6 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the site of Hempstead High School, but this wasn't always a place of learning. For years, students here attended classes in rented rooms, and for a time, even the old Waller County Jail served as a…

  • Drennan, Lillie Elizabeth McGee · 0.7 mi · Tsha Handbook

    Lillie Elizabeth Drennan, the first licensed female truck driver and trucking-firm owner in Texas (and the United States), was born at John Sealy Hospital in Galveston, Texas, on January 9, 1897. Her mother, about whom…

  • Best Job In Town At Hawkins Service Station · 0.7 mi

    You're near the corner where a Hempstead teenager landed the best job in town. Starting in 1954, one local boy pumped gas for almost seven years at Hawkins Service Station, owned by Luther Hawkins and managed by Henry…

  • The Waller County Mounted Posse · 0.7 mi

    Drive these roads and picture the Waller County Mounted Posse riding by torchlight. As the story is told, back in the 1950s the posse performed all over, even inside the old Houston Fat Stock Show at the Sam Houston…

  • Groce, Jared Ellison · 0.7 mi · Tsha Handbook

    Jared Ellison Groce, planter, public official, and the wealthiest settler in Stephen F. Austin 's colony, was born in Halifax County, Virginia, on October 12, 1782, the son of Jared Ellison and Sarah (Sheppard) Groce.…

  • Hannay, Allen Burroughs · 0.7 mi · Tsha Handbook

    Allen Hannay, lawyer and judge, was born in Hempstead, Texas, on February 14, 1892, the son of Robert Edwards and Katherine Donaldson (Allen) Hannay. His father was a United States attorney and served as state attorney…

  • Peebles, Richard Rodgers · 0.7 mi · Tsha Handbook

    You're driving through what is now Waller County, near Hempstead. Back in 1863, this area was a hotbed of political tension. Dr. Richard Rodgers Peebles, a wealthy physician and railroad investor, opposed secession. He…

  • Pinckney, John M. · 0.7 mi · Tsha Handbook

    You're driving through Waller County, near Hempstead, where a tragic event unfolded in <say-as interpret-as="date" format="y">1905</say-as>. John M. Pinckney, a former Confederate soldier and then a United States…

  • The German Immigrant Who Built And Ran Hempstead · 0.7 mi

    William Ahrenbeck crossed an ocean from Germany and ended up running a Texas railroad town. Born in eighteen twenty-eight, he became a builder and civic leader in Hempstead, and folks here trusted him enough to make him…

  • Kilpatrick, Madison · 0.7 mi · Tsha Handbook

    You're driving through Waller County, near Hempstead, where a man named Madison Kilpatrick rose from slavery to become a powerful political leader during Reconstruction. Born enslaved in Alabama in 1829, Kilpatrick…

  • Pickens, Edwin [Buster] · 0.7 mi · Tsha Handbook

    You're driving through Hempstead, Texas, the birthplace of Edwin "Buster" Pickens, a blues pianist whose music echoed the Texas idiom, sometimes called "sawmill" piano. After serving in World War II, Buster returned to…

  • Waller County · 0.7 mi · Tsha Handbook

    You're driving through Waller County, a place that played a surprisingly big role in early Texas agriculture. Back in 1821, Jared Groce established Bernardo Plantation, and by 1822, he grew a crop of cotton – possibly…

  • Hempstead, TX · 0.7 mi · Tsha Handbook

    You're driving through Hempstead, a town born from a railroad dream! Back in 1856, founders Richard Peebles and James McDade organized a town company, aiming to be the terminus for the Houston and Texas Central Railway.…

  • Camp Groce · 0.7 mi · Tsha Handbook

    Camp Groce, at times referred to as Camp Liendo, was located on Col. Leonard W. Groce 's Liendo Plantation on Clear Creek and the Houston and Texas Central Railway, two miles east of Hempstead in Waller County.…

  • Snell, Martin Kingsley · 0.7 mi · Tsha Handbook

    Martin Kingsley Snell, soldier, was born in Erie, Pennsylvania in 1815 and came to Texas in November 1835 as a private in Capt. William Gordon Cooke 's company of New Orleans Greys . He took part in the siege of Bexar…

  • Ahrenbeck-Urban Home · 0.7 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the Ahrenbeck-Urban Home, a beautiful Greek Revival house built around 1872. It was constructed by William Ahrenbeck, a German immigrant who became a civic leader, postmaster, and mayor of Hempstead.…

  • Kirby, Robert Harper · 0.7 mi · Tsha Handbook

    You're driving near Hempstead, Texas, a place that was home to Robert Harper Kirby, a man who poured his own fortune into making Texas dry. In 1919, Kirby served as chairman of the statewide campaign for prohibition.…

  • Scurry, Richardson A. · 0.7 mi · Tsha Handbook

    You're driving through Waller County, not far from Hempstead, the site of a tragic accident that befell a prominent Texas figure. Richardson A. Scurry, a lawyer and politician who fought at the Battle of San Jacinto,…

  • Sixteenth Texas Infantry · 0.7 mi · Tsha Handbook

    You're driving through what was once the staging ground for a Confederate regiment organized right here near Hempstead. On March 25, <say-as interpret-as="date" format="y">1862</say-as>, Colonel George Flournoy gathered…

  • Twenty-Fifth Texas Cavalry · 0.7 mi · Tsha Handbook

    You're driving through Waller County, near Hempstead, where the Twenty-fifth Texas Cavalry was organized back in <say-as interpret-as="date" format="y">1862</say-as>. Known also as the Third Texas Lancers, this…

  • Twenty-Second Texas Infantry · 0.7 mi · Tsha Handbook

    You're driving through Texas, maybe near Hempstead, and right here is where the Twenty-second Texas Infantry, also known as Hubbard's regiment, ended its Civil War journey. Formed in August of <say-as…

  • Abbott, Charles L. · 0.7 mi · Tsha Handbook

    You're driving through Austin County, near Hempstead, a town that was home to Charles Abbott. Abbott was a Republican merchant who served in the Texas House of Representatives during the turbulent Reconstruction era. He…

  • Rutledge, Paul Lawrence, Sr. · 0.7 mi · Tsha Handbook

    You're driving through Anderson County, and right here is where Paul Lawrence Rutledge, Sr., spent a good part of his career. Born in Hempstead back in 1904, Rutledge was an educator and community leader. He served as…

  • Waller, Edwin · 0.8 mi · Historical Marker

    Plantation Home of Edwin Waller (1800-1883). Member of the consultation in 1835. Signer of the Texas Declaration of Independence. First mayor of the City of Austin. Member of the Secession Convention in 1861. On this…

  • A Forgotten 1859 Grave Under The H-E-B Campus · 1.0 mi

    You're near land that is becoming one of the biggest things ever built in Waller County. H-E-B closed on nearly five hundred acres in Hempstead, south of U.S. Highway 290 and east of State Highway 6, for a sprawling…

  • Five Miles Southeast to the Camp Site Of the Texas Army · 1.0 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving through Waller County, not far from where the Texas Army made camp in the spring of 1836. From March 31st to April 13th, the army gathered here, just five miles southeast of your current location. They…

  • The Salt Grass Trail Ride: 103 Miles to the Rodeo · 1.1 mi

    Every February, more than a thousand riders and some two dozen mule-drawn wagons spend a week walking 103 miles from Cat Spring to downtown Houston, camping at fairgrounds and farms in Bellville, Hempstead, Brookshire…

  • Madison Kilpatrick: First Treasurer Of A Brand-New County · 1.7 mi

    He arrived here a runaway from Alabama, slipping into the country around Hempstead before the Civil War. He married Betty Bradford, off the Woodard Plantation, and together they raised eight children. Madison Kilpatrick…

  • Kilpatrick, Madison · 1.7 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past where Madison Kilpatrick once lived, a man who escaped slavery to become a leader in Waller County. He arrived before the Civil War as a runaway slave from Alabama. After marrying and raising eight…

  • Camp Groce: The Prison Camp That Kept Making Everyone Sick · 1.8 mi

    You're near the site of Camp Groce, a Civil War camp on Leonard Groce's Liendo Plantation land east of Hempstead. Built in spring 1862 as a Confederate training camp, it was abandoned because its stagnant Clear Creek…

  • Hempstead: A Town Invented by a Railroad Map · 2.3 mi

    Hempstead exists because two men read a railroad survey. On December 29, 1856, Dr. Richard Rodgers Peebles and James W. McDade organized the Hempstead Town Company to sell lots at the projected railhead of the Houston &…

  • Over the Wall: The Camp Groce Prisoners Who Walked Home · 2.4 mi

    On the moonlit night of August 29, 1864, around forty Union prisoners broke out of Camp Groce in its largest escape, helped by sympathetic guards, some of them German and Irish Confederates, who slung ropes over the…

  • Camp Groce: The Training Camp That Became Texas’s Largest Prison · 2.5 mi

    You're near Liendo Plantation, just east of Hempstead, on the ground that held Camp Groce, the largest Confederate prisoner-of-war camp in Texas. It started in 1862 not as a prison but as a 'camp of instruction,' a…

  • Liendo Plantation · 2.5 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past Liendo Plantation, a place with a story that spans industry, war, and art. In <say-as interpret-as="date" format="y">1853</say-as>, Leonard W. Groce built this mansion, surrounded by model plantation…

  • Liendo · 2.5 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past Liendo, a plantation home built way back in 1853 by Leonard W. Groce. For years, it was the scene of lavish Southern hospitality. But then, in 1873, it was purchased by Dr. Edmund Duncan Montgomery,…

  • The Devil’s Summer: Yellow Fever and the Run for the Brazos · 2.6 mi

    By the late summer of 1864 Camp Groce had become a death trap. Some seven hundred prisoners were packed into a stockade of barely two and a half acres, the well had caved in, and the latrines were fouling the creek that…

  • Treue der Union: German Texans Guarded by German Texans · 2.6 mi

    Camp Groce held one of the Civil War's most poignant face-offs. In June 1864, about three dozen captured Union prisoners of the 1st Texas Union Cavalry arrived here. They were Texans, many of them German immigrants, who…

  • The Diary Hidden in His Shoes · 2.6 mi

    Almost everything we know about daily life inside Camp Groce survives because of one stubborn prisoner. John Read, a Harvard graduate and the paymaster of the captured Union gunboat Granite City, kept a near-daily diary…

  • In This Vicinity_Plantation of Charles Donoho · 2.7 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the area where General Sam Houston and the Texas Army made camp in April of <say-as interpret-as="date" format="y">1836</say-as>. This plantation, owned by Charles Donoho, was the last stop for…

  • Custer at Liendo: The General in the Plantation House · 2.8 mi

    After the war ended, the most famous cavalryman in America came to live on the very same plantation that had held Camp Groce. In late 1865 General George Armstrong Custer led a division into Texas to keep order, and he…

  • Groce Family Plantations · 2.8 mi · Historical Marker

    Look off to your right as you drive past Hempstead, and you're seeing the legacy of the Groce family, pioneers who arrived in Texas in 1822. Jared E. Groce led a massive wagon train, bringing not just people, but…

  • Custer, Gen. George and Libbie, Campsite · 2.8 mi · Historical Marker

    Soon after the Civil War General George Armstrong Custer and his cavalry unit arrived in Texas as part of a large U.S. force sent to establish order and counter the threat posed by French-controlled Mexico. From August…

  • Clear Creek Confederate War Camps · 2.8 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving through Waller County, near Hempstead, where the landscape you see was once dotted with Confederate Army camps. No trace remains today, but historical accounts tell us this area was a crucial training…

  • Pine Island: The Forgotten Place That Came Back · 3.5 mi

    You're in Pine Island, a community with a rare trick: it vanished and then came back. The old rural settlement coalesced by the 1880s around Pine Island Baptist Church, midway between Hempstead and Waller, with a school…

  • Lost No More: The Yankee Cemetery West of Hempstead · 3.7 mi

    This quiet acre west of Hempstead is where many of the Union prisoners who died at Camp Groce finally rest. For more than a century their graves were essentially lost; after the war the army found only two marked…

  • Union Army P.O.W. Cemetery · 3.7 mi · Historical Marker

    Several Confederate military facilities were positioned near Hempsted (2.5 mi. w), an important railroad junction, during the Civil War. Camp Groce (then about 6 mi. e) was a prisoner-of-war stockade established on the…

  • The Last Barn Built by the Man Who Built Texas Skylines · 4.0 mi

    Northwest of Hempstead on Highway 290 stands a Dutch Colonial dairy barn with a remarkable pedigree. The land traces to Austin-colony grants and was owned for about ninety years by the family of Francis Jarvis Cooke…

  • Pine Island Baptist Church · 4.3 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the site of Pine Island Baptist Church near Hempstead. This congregation got its start on August 13th, 1888, in the old Hopewell schoolhouse. Thirteen original members formed the church, taking its…

  • Bernardo: The Plantation Where the Texas Army Caught Its Breath · 4.4 mi

    Near here stood Bernardo Plantation, established in 1822 by Jared E. Groce, the first large planter in Texas, on a bluff above the east bank of the Brazos about four miles south of present Hempstead. Its famous…

  • A World Center for the Science of Goats · 4.5 mi

    Here is a sentence you do not expect: Prairie View A and M is one of the most important places in the world for the science of goats. The university runs the International Goat Research Center, and the work there is far…

  • Groce's Ferry: Where a Steamboat Carried an Army Over the Brazos · 4.5 mi

    This is the site of Groce's Ferry, established in 1822 by Jared E. Groce where the old Coushatta crossing met the Brazos at his Bernardo Plantation. It's worth remembering what a river meant back then. Most people,…

  • Site of Groce's Ferry · 4.5 mi · Historical Marker

    Established across the Brazos in 1822 (the river has since changed its course) by Jared E. Groce (1782-1836). Near here the Texas Army camped from March 30 to April 12, 1836. Erected by the State of Texas 1936

  • The Mother of Black Trails · 4.8 mi

    Every winter, a long line of riders and covered wagons rolls roughly eighty miles from the Prairie View and Hempstead area toward Houston, headed for the rodeo. It is a tradition that almost did not get to exist. The…

  • Jacob E. Freeman · 4.9 mi · Historical Marker

    In response to the political, social and economic turmoil in Texas and the South after the Civil War, the federal government enacted the Reconstruction Act on March 2, 1867. Many local and state officials were removed…

  • The Man Born Enslaved Who Founded Prairie View · 4.9 mi

    Prairie View exists because a man who was born into slavery decided Texas needed to educate its Black citizens. William H. Holland was born enslaved in eighteen forty-one, served in the United States Army during the…

  • Jacob Freeman, From Bondage To The Texas Capitol · 4.9 mi

    Here in Waller County, near Prairie View, lived a man who started life owned by another and ended up writing laws in the Texas House. Jacob E. Freeman was born enslaved in Alabama around eighteen forty-one. He came to…

  • When Prairie View Took Its Vote to the Supreme Court · 4.9 mi

    When the voting age dropped to eighteen, thousands of Prairie View A and M students suddenly could vote, and Waller County made it hard for them to do it. The county registrar singled out Prairie View students, handing…

  • The Prairie View Co-eds - Prairie View A&M · 4.9 mi

    During World War II, Prairie View A&M was home to one of the most popular all-female big bands in America: the Prairie View Co-eds. With more and more men drafted into the armed forces, band director Will Henry Bennett…

  • The Ivy League President Who Came Home to Prairie View · 4.9 mi

    In two thousand seventeen, one of the most celebrated leaders in American higher education chose to run a historically Black university in rural Texas. Ruth J. Simmons had already made history as president of Brown…

  • From Plantation to University · 5.0 mi

    The ground beneath Prairie View tells a profound American story. Before there was a university here, this land was the Alta Vista Plantation, a 1,400-acre cotton and corn farm worked by enslaved people. After the Civil…

  • The Formerly Enslaved Man Who Founded a College · 5.0 mi

    Prairie View A&M University exists because of the vision and political skill of one remarkable man: William H. Holland. Born a slave in Marshall in 1841, Holland seized the opportunity for education after Emancipation,…

  • Prairie View, TX · 5.0 mi

    Prairie View is, at its heart, a university town. But more than that, it’s a place where education itself is almost a crop, carefully cultivated and deeply rooted in the land. You see, Prairie View A&M wasn't just…

  • Prairie View Ran Sports for 500 Black Schools · 5.0 mi

    For half a century, the center of Black high-school life in Texas was not a state agency in Austin. It was Prairie View. Because the main interscholastic organization barred Black schools, leaders here helped build…

  • The Story of Sandra Bland Parkway · 5.0 mi

    As you travel through Prairie View, you may find yourself on a road called Sandra Bland Parkway. That name is a piece of very recent, and very painful, history. In July 2015, a 28-year-old Black woman named Sandra…

  • The World's Goat Experts · 5.0 mi

    You might not expect it, but Prairie View is a global hub for a very specific science: goat research. As part of its land-grant mission, Prairie View A&M University operates the International Goat Research Center. Why…

  • Incorporated in 1969, Founded a Century Before That · 5.0 mi

    Prairie View, in Waller County, incorporated in 1969 with the motto 'Productive, United, Indomitable' and a strong-mayor council. But the city is a lot younger than the place. Prairie View grew up around Prairie View…

  • The First in Texas, and the Ground They Put It On · 5.0 mi

    Prairie View is home to Prairie View A&M University, the second-oldest public university in Texas and, in 1876, the first public institution of higher learning in the state to educate African Americans. Where the…

  • Prairie View A&M University · 5.0 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past Prairie View A&M University, a place with a remarkable history that began in 1876 as the 'Agricultural and Mechanical College for Colored Youth.' It was Texas' second state-supported college,…

  • Alta Vista: The Plantation That Became Prairie View A&M · 5.1 mi

    Prairie View A&M University stands on the grounds of Alta Vista, the plantation home of Jared and Helen Marr Kirby that crowned a hill over the open prairie. After the Civil War, Helen Kirby turned the mansion into a…

  • Eighty Straight Losses, and the Night They Finally Won · 5.1 mi

    Prairie View A and M once fielded one of the proudest programs in Black college football. Then it lived through one of the longest losing streaks in the history of the sport. After integration, the school lost the…

  • Bistro 1876, Named for the Year It All Began · 5.1 mi

    If you want to sit down for a proper meal in Prairie View, the clearest choice is right on campus. Bistro 1876 takes its name from the year the university was founded, eighteen seventy-six, so even ordering lunch comes…

  • Shiloh Baptist Church · 5.1 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving through Waller County, and just off the road here is the site of Shiloh Baptist Church. It all started on September 21st, 1871, when thirteen members, carrying letters of transfer, gathered at a nearby…

  • The Hidden Cemetery and the Woman Who Remembered · 5.2 mi

    Tucked behind the university lies a small, easy-to-miss burial ground called the Wyatt Chapel Community Cemetery, and it may be the most haunting place in Prairie View. Researchers believe it holds the graves of people…

  • The Soil That Gave Prairie View Its Name · 5.2 mi

    Prairie View was named for its view of the open prairie, and that landscape is not an accident. It is geology. The town sits on gently sloping uplands at the edge of the greater Houston region, on soils so distinctive…

  • Wyatt Chapel Community Cemetery · 5.2 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the Wyatt Chapel Community Cemetery, a place with roots stretching back to the days of slavery. Originally, this land was part of Jared Kirby's Alta Vista Plantation. Oral tradition says Kirby set…

  • Shiloh Cemetery · 5.2 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past Shiloh Cemetery, a place with roots stretching back to 1881. That's when Thomas Armer donated land for a Baptist church and, just two years later, sold an acre for this very cemetery. The community…

  • Howth: A Flag Stop That Outlived Its Own Boom · 5.3 mi

    You're passing Howth, a community that began in the early 1870s as a flag station on the Houston & Texas Central, probably named for William Edward Howth, who provided the land. Its post office opened in 1872, and while…

  • The San Jacinto Soldier Who Lived To Eighty-Seven · 5.5 mi

    When this man closed his eyes for the last time in nineteen oh three, Texas was losing one of the few people alive who could say he had stood in the line at San Jacinto. Francis Jarvis Cooke was born in Beaufort, North…

  • Francis Jarvis Cooke · 5.5 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the resting place of Francis Jarvis Cooke, a veteran of the Texas Revolution and the Battle of San Jacinto. Born in North Carolina in <say-as interpret-as="date" format="y">1816</say-as>, Cooke…

  • Salem Cemetery · 5.5 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past Salem Cemetery, a place that started as a family burial ground for T.B. White. His wife Elizabeth, who died in 1857, and her father Henry Kirby, who died in 1854, are among the earliest interred…

  • Sam Houston's Camp West of the Brazos · 5.6 mi · Historical Marker

    This is the ground where a retreating army became a fighting force. At the end of March 1836, General Sam Houston marched roughly 500 demoralized soldiers to this bend of the Brazos River after weeks of retreat. The…

  • Bland, Sandra Annette [Sandy] · 5.7 mi · Tsha Handbook

    You're driving near Prairie View, Texas, where in July 2015, Sandra Bland, a vibrant activist, was pulled over for a minor traffic violation. What started as a routine stop escalated quickly. After refusing to put out…

  • The College They Built on the Plantation · 5.7 mi

    You're driving through Prairie View, and the ground under it was Alta Vista plantation. Jared and Helen Marr Kirby ran four plantations out here near Best and Iron creeks, and Alta Vista at one point counted four…

  • The Campus Market Where Students Make the Sausage · 5.7 mi

    The most Prairie View thing you can possibly eat does not come from an old diner. It comes from the university itself. At the Meat Science Center for Innovation, agriculture students and faculty raise the animals, then…

  • Prairie View, TX (Waller County) · 5.7 mi · Tsha Handbook

    Prairie View is on U.S. Highway 290 and the Texas and New Orleans Railroad, between Hempstead and Waller in north central Waller County. It traces its roots to Alta Vista, the plantation home of Jared E. and Helen Marr…

  • Banks, Willette Rutherford · 5.7 mi · Tsha Handbook

    Willette Rutherford (Scrap) Banks, teacher and university administrator, was born on August 8, 1881, in Hartwell, Georgia, the second of thirteen children of J. M. and Laura Banks. J. M. Banks was a Georgia populist and…

  • Prairie View A&M University College of Nursing · 5.7 mi · Tsha Handbook

    You're driving through Prairie View, home to a pioneering nursing program that started right here in 1918. With just five students, it began as a two-year diploma program. Over the years, it grew, adding clinical…

  • Kirby, Jared E. · 5.7 mi · Tsha Handbook

    You're driving through what is now Waller County, near Prairie View, where Jared E. Kirby built one of the largest plantations in Texas. Arriving from Mississippi in 1849, Kirby rapidly accumulated wealth. By 1860, he…

  • The Commissioner Who Lived a Century · 6.4 mi

    The road crossing under US 290 here carries a name most drivers never slow down to read: James Muse Parkway. Waller County's own records give it in full, Commissioner James R. Muse Parkway. Muse served twelve years as…

  • The Legacy Next Door: Prairie View A&M · 6.6 mi

    While you're in Waller, you're right next door to a place of immense historical importance: Prairie View A&M University. Though it's in the city of Prairie View, its story is deeply woven into the fabric of this entire…

  • The Engineering Marvel of the Daikin Megaplex · 6.6 mi

    As you pass Waller on Highway 290, you can’t miss the enormous white building that dominates the horizon. That’s the Daikin Texas Technology Park, a marvel of modern engineering and logistics. At 4.2 million square…

  • The Carlisle Place, 1900 · 6.9 mi

    The Brazos floods of July 1899 set this tragedy in motion. On John Carlisle's bottomland plantation, roughly five miles east of Chappell Hill, tenant farmer King Howard took in his wife's sister after the flood left her…

  • Rock Island: The County's First Town, Lost to a Railroad Snub · 7.0 mi

    Somewhere along this reach of the Brazos stood Rock Island, the first real town of what's now northern Waller County. It took its name from a small rocky island Amos Gates spotted in the river; his family is credited as…

  • When Steamboats Ruled the Brazos · 7.1 mi

    The Brazos beside you was once a working highway. From the 1830s to the Civil War, the river carried Texas's most ambitious steamboat trade, because it drained the state's richest cotton and sugar country and fed the…

  • Prairie View A&M University · 7.6 mi · Tsha Handbook

    You're driving through Waller County, and right here is the site of Prairie View A&M University. Back in 1876, Texas was mandated by the federal government to create an agricultural college for Black youth. A commission…

  • Bernardo Plantation · 7.6 mi · Tsha Handbook

    Bernardo Plantation, one of the plantation homes of Jared E. Groce , was located on a high bluff on the Brazos River four miles south of the site of present Hempstead in Waller County. In 1822 Groce, the first large…

  • Irons Creek and a Colonist Who Left Only His Name · 7.6 mi

    This creek rises about three miles northwest of Monaville and threads 18 miles down through Waller County, first south, then curving southeast near Mount Zion before spilling into the Brazos River west of Brookshire.…

  • Austin, James Elijah Brown · 7.6 mi · Tsha Handbook

    You're driving through Texas, a land shaped by pioneers. Right here, you're passing through land once owned by James Elijah Brown Austin. He was one of the original Old Three Hundred colonists, brother to Stephen F.…

  • Baker, Joseph · 7.6 mi · Tsha Handbook

    You're driving through what is now Waller County, and right here, in 1835, a journalist named Joseph Baker, known as Don José, co-founded the Telegraph and Texas Register. <break time="400ms"/> This paper became the…

  • Liendo Plantation · 7.6 mi · Tsha Handbook

    You're driving through Waller County, and right here is the site of Liendo Plantation. Built by slave labor and completed in 1853, this grand home was a marvel of its time. Imagine bricks fired from local clay, a…

  • Rolling Hills, TX · 7.6 mi · Local history

    Rolling Hills, nestled in the flat coastal prairie of Waller County, had always been a quiet community. The landscape, a patchwork of grazing land and scattered woodlands, reflected a slower pace of life. But that…

  • Holland, William H. · 7.6 mi · Tsha Handbook

    William H. Holland, soldier, legislator, and teacher, was born a slave in Marshall in 1841. He and his brothers James and Milton were probably the sons of Capt. Bird Holland , a White man who bought their freedom in the…

  • Gladish, TX · 7.6 mi · Tsha Handbook

    Gladish was once a thriving community on what is now Farm Road 1736 eight miles northeast of Hempstead in northern Waller County. It was named for Capt. Richard Allen Gladish, a Confederate soldier who settled in the…

  • Williams, John · 7.6 mi · Tsha Handbook

    You're driving through what is now Waller County, but back in 1824, this was the wild frontier of Mexican Texas. Right here, one of Stephen F. Austin's original colonists, a man also named John Williams, received title…

  • Fields Store, TX · 7.6 mi · Tsha Handbook

    Fields (Field's) Store is at the junction of Farm roads 1488 and 362, ten miles northeast of Hempstead in northeast Waller County. It existed as early as 1872 and received its name from Andrew Field and his son Druey…

  • Hegar, TX · 7.6 mi · Tsha Handbook

    Hegar, also known as Springer, is six miles northeast of Waller in eastern Waller County 1½ miles west of the Montgomery and Harris county lines. Hegar existed by at least 1887, when Oscar George Hegar settled on land…

  • Sunny Side, TX (Waller County) · 7.6 mi · Tsha Handbook

    Sunny Side (Sunnyside) is near Irons Creek and two miles south of Farm Road 529 some twenty miles southeast of Hempstead and ten miles northwest of Brookshire in Waller County. It was settled in 1866, and a post office…

  • Early Texas River Steamers · 8.0 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving through Washington County, where steamboats once played a crucial role in Texas commerce. The Brazos River, just a couple miles east, was a highway for these early vessels. In 1840, the first steamer…

  • Two Sausage Dynasties on One Highway · 8.0 mi

    Chappell Hill is a sausage town twice over. The name you see in grocery stores across Texas is the Chappell Hill Sausage Company, founded in 1968 when Frank and Clara Cone moved out from Houston and bought a little…

  • Highland Home School · 8.1 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the site of Highland Home School, a small white frame building that opened its doors in the 1890s. Originally called Boyd School, it served families in this rural area for decades. Imagine just one…

  • Harris County, TX · 8.1 mi · Local history

    Harris County lies on the Western Gulf Coastal Plain, a landscape gently sloping toward the sea. The average elevation barely tops a hundred feet, a subtle roll of land defined by slow-moving rivers and bayous carving…

  • Waller County, TX · 8.4 mi · Local history

    Waller County, a part of the Upper Gulf Coast region, has seen considerable change in recent years. The relatively flat Western Gulf Coastal Plain, with its mix of farmland and scattered trees, belies the intensity of…

  • The Instructor Who Made Himself the Cushion · 8.5 mi

    On a hot Saturday afternoon, August first, two thousand nine, at the Skydive Houston drop zone a few miles south of Waller, instructor Dave Hartsock agreed to take up one more jumper before calling it a day. She was…

  • Daniel Johnston's Garage Studio · 8.5 mi

    For almost three decades, Waller was home to a songwriter Texas Monthly called one of the best loved in alternative rock. Daniel Johnston made his name in Austin in the nineteen eighties, handing out homemade cassettes,…

  • Waller, Edwin, Jr. · 8.5 mi

    You're in Waller, Texas, right where Edwin Waller Jr. made his mark. Born in 1825, Waller was farming and running a business when the Civil War called. He answered, becoming captain of a defense company, then a major in…

  • The Titans Owner's Waller Ranch · 8.5 mi

    The Tennessee Titans started out in nineteen sixty as the Houston Oilers, owned by Bud Adams. Adams ran that team himself, down to the smallest decision, and ESPN reported that he would not let his two daughters work…

  • Reamos, Sherwood Y. · 8.5 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the spot where Sherwood Y. Reamos, born way back in 1812, played a small but crucial role in the Texas Revolution. On April 21st, 1836, the same day as the Battle of San Jacinto, Reamos was detailed…

  • Waller, TX · 8.5 mi · Tsha Handbook

    You're driving through Waller, Texas, a town born in the late 19th century. It was officially laid out in 1884, named for Edwin Waller, and quickly got a post office and a general store. By 1898, it was home to the…

  • St. Mary's Catholic Church and Cemetery · 8.6 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving through Waller County, passing the site of St. Mary's Catholic Church and Cemetery. It all started in 1891 when Czech immigrants began buying land here. Just a year later, four families founded this…

  • Buckhorn Cemetery · 8.7 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past Buckhorn Cemetery, established in 1880. It was recognized as a Historic Texas Cemetery in 2001.

  • Fields Store, TX · 8.8 mi · Local history

    Nestled in the rolling farmlands of Waller County, Fields Store carries echoes of its German and Czech settlers. The Upper Gulf Coast region's fertile soil drew families seeking new lives in the mid-19th century. While…

  • Eric Osterhout - Waller, Texas · 8.8 mi

    That was Eric Osterhout, an Americana and country songwriter based in Waller, Texas. His writing soaks up the Southeast Texas landscape around him -- quiet mornings, long shadows, and that charged stillness before a…

  • God's Mercy Store: You Decided the Profit · 8.9 mi

    Just south of the old Waller depot, on what folks here called the Old Houston Highway, a man named A. D. Purvis ran one of the strangest stores in all of Texas. Around nineteen eighteen he opened what he called God's…

  • Penick and Cherry: Where Waller Got Its First Light · 8.9 mi

    Stand at the northwest corner of Penick and Cherry, and you are at the spot where Waller first plugged into the modern world. In nineteen twenty-eight the electricity finally reached town, and the very first house wired…

  • The Store That Belonged to Jesus Christ · 8.9 mi

    The folks who grew up around the God's Mercy Store here in Waller tell more than just the strange way it priced things. The way they tell it, A. D. Purvis was out plowing a field one day when he was called to move to…

  • The Wall That Trapped a City · 9.0 mi

    Since you're in Waller, here's the wall tangent: the Berlin Wall was built by East Germany in nineteen sixty one to stop people leaving through West Berlin. It became a system of concrete barriers, patrol roads, towers,…

  • Waller Began as 500 Cattle and Two Little Houses · 9.0 mi

    When the town of Waller was officially laid out, on January the eleventh, eighteen eighty-four, there was almost nothing here to call a town. A man named K. H. Faulkner filed the plat, but nearly everything on the…

  • The Great Wall Is Many Walls · 9.0 mi

    Since you're in Waller, here's the wall tangent: the Great Wall of China is not one unbroken structure built by one emperor. Chinese states and dynasties constructed, joined, abandoned, and rebuilt fortifications across…

  • How Sieges Beat Walls · 9.0 mi

    Since you're in Waller, here's the wall tangent: ancient city walls forced attackers to solve engineering problems. Ladders tried to go over, mines and tunnels tried to go under, battering rams attacked gates, and…

  • Walls That Hold Up and Hold Back · 9.0 mi

    Since you're in Waller, here's the wall tangent: a load-bearing wall supports floors, roof, or structure above it, so removing one without replacing its load path can cause collapse. A retaining wall does a different…

  • How a Quiet Wall Works · 9.0 mi

    Since you're in Waller, here's the wall tangent: soundproofing is rarely about one magic foam panel. Heavy layers resist vibration, airtight construction blocks leaks, resilient connections reduce vibration passing…

  • Wall Street Had a Wall · 9.0 mi

    Since you're in Waller, here's the wall tangent: Wall Street's name refers to a real defensive boundary built along the northern edge of Dutch New Amsterdam in the seventeenth century. The structure and its setting…

  • The Man This Town Is Named For Drew the Streets of Austin · 9.0 mi

    The name on the sign belongs to a man who laid out the street grid of the capital of Texas. Edwin Waller was elected on the first of February, 1836, as a delegate from Brazoria. He went to Washington-on-the-Brazos and…

  • Why Humans Build Walls · 9.0 mi

    Since you're in Waller, here's the wall tangent: a wall can protect, carry weight, create privacy, mark property, hold back soil, or control movement. Those purposes overlap but are not identical. A defensive wall is a…

  • Hadrian's Frontier · 9.0 mi

    Since you're in Waller, here's the wall tangent: Hadrian's Wall crossed northern Britain as part of a Roman frontier system, not simply a line separating civilization from emptiness. Built beginning in the second…

  • Writing on the Wall · 9.0 mi

    Since you're in Waller, here's the wall tangent: the writing on the wall comes from the biblical Book of Daniel, where mysterious words appear during King Belshazzar's feast and are interpreted as a warning that his…

  • A Church, a School System and a Store, All in One Year · 9.0 mi

    Nineteen sixty-five did more to Waller in twelve months than most decades manage. Start with the first of March, a Thursday. Waller Baptist Church burned. Not damaged. The building was totally destroyed, and the cause…

  • The Pistol That Misfired Three Times · 9.0 mi

    On the back roads of Waller County, the day before Thanksgiving in 1986, two brothers were out riding around. Frank Digges was 30 years old and had been out of prison three years, paroled after serving six of a…

  • The College That Opened With Three Students and Died in a Storm · 9.0 mi

    Waller High School stands on the campus of a college that lived just two years. South Texas Baptist College opened in the fall of 1898 on land from local landowner C. C. Waller, with W. E. Clark of Kentucky's Georgetown…

  • The Whole Surviving Newspaper Is Three Pages, and One Is Missing · 9.0 mi

    Waller had a newspaper. The Waller News started up in 1910, a weekly, published by a man named G. A. Kastner, carrying local news and state news and national news and the advertisement of every merchant in town. Here is…

  • Matt Mercado - Waller, Texas · 9.0 mi

    That was Matt Mercado, a Waller, Texas original. He grew up on ranch life, on horseback since he was two years old. He graduated high school at fifteen, and at sixteen he was competing on NBC's big national singing show…

  • Waller, TX · 9.0 mi

    Waller, Texas, might seem like just another quiet spot on the map, but it's got a real heart, and a lot of that heart beats with the rhythm of the land. Agriculture has always been the lifeblood here. You see, the soil…

  • The Second-Fastest-Growing County in America Is This One · 9.0 mi

    Between July of 2024 and July of 2025, Waller County was the fastest-growing county in Texas and the second-fastest-growing county in the United States. Not the fastest-growing around Houston. In the country, out of…

  • South Texas Baptist College · 9.0 mi · Historical Marker

    An ambitious institution chartered by Baptists who formed South Texas Educational Conference about 1895 and in 1898 secured campus site from a local landowner, C.C. Waller. Trustees serving when college opened in fall…

  • The Counter Where the Whole Town Grew Up · 9.0 mi

    Ask anyone who was a kid in old Waller and they will tell you the God's Mercy Store was the heart of the whole town. It had no air conditioning, just rough wooden counters, wide-plank floors, and a spirit that made…

  • Eighty Students in a Town Three Years Old · 9.0 mi

    Waller was platted on the eleventh of January, 1884, and had a post office inside a month. A merchant remembered as Uncle Doc Sanders opened the first general store. The public school opened in 1887. By the end of its…

  • First United Methodist Church of Waller · 9.0 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving through Waller, and right here is the story of its first Methodist church. It started way back in 1888, but they didn't even have a building for years! They met in the schoolhouse, and even used the…

  • The Livery Stable That Became Waller's Ford Dealer · 9.1 mi

    Back when the only way into Waller was the train, you could step off at the depot and find yourself stranded, because there was no transportation waiting to carry you anywhere. Two brothers, Ed and Bob Robertson, fixed…

  • The Day Waller's Depot Got Up and Left · 9.1 mi

    The railroad is the whole reason Waller exists, so there is something almost sad about how this part goes. The town grew up around its train depot, the building where farmers shipped out their produce and travelers…

  • Waller's First Laws Went After Loose Chickens and Hogs · 9.1 mi

    Waller had been a real town for sixty years before it ever bothered to become a city. It did not incorporate until nineteen forty-seven, when an election made it official and a man named Jim Haney became the first…

  • Sam Houston's Camp West of the Brazos · 9.1 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the site where General Sam Houston camped his army just weeks before the Battle of San Jacinto. It's late March of <say-as interpret-as="date" format="y">1836</say-as>, and the Texas army is…

  • Waller · 9.1 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving through Waller, a town that owes its existence to the railroad. Back around 1857, the Houston and Texas Central Railroad pushed its tracks this way, opening up the area for farmers and ranchers to sell…

  • Joseph: The Town That Baptized Converts in a Boiler Tank · 9.2 mi

    This was Joseph, a community that never could settle on one name. Established around 1900 and named for early citizen Joseph Hard, it was also called Bradville for William Bradbury, who opened the post office in 1905…

  • Slovanville: The Czech Lodge Hall the Map Calls Sloganville · 9.2 mi

    South of Waller lay Slovanville, a farm community named for the European immigrants from Slavic countries, mostly Czechs, who settled this prairie; it was also known as Kulhanek, and the county's own map of forgotten…

  • Waller Bulldogs — a 6A football town and quiet NFL pipeline · 9.3 mi

    Waller High School (Waller, TX — northwest of Houston) has become a quiet pipeline to the NFL on defense, sending linebackers Joplo Bartu and Jason Phillips to the pros, with defensive lineman Gabe Hall following. The…

  • Bessie's Creek and the Man Whose Name It Wore Down · 9.3 mi

    The water you're near here rises about a mile and a half northeast of Monaville and runs roughly 30 miles southeast to meet the Brazos River south of Fulshear. On old maps you'll see it as Best Creek, Best's Creek, or…

  • Kickapoo Creek · 9.3 mi

    Kickapoo Creek is a short one — only about three and a half miles tucked into the extreme northwest corner of Harris County before it slips into Spring Creek. The Handbook doesn't spell out the name's origin, but it…

  • Hockley's Railroad Tradition Survives in Miniature · 9.7 mi

    Hockley grew up around the railroad, and that tradition now lives on in miniature. At Zube Park, a club called the Houston Area Live Steamers operates rideable miniature steam, diesel, and electric locomotives that you…

  • Frey Cemetery · 9.7 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the Frey Cemetery, a family burial ground that started with a tragedy. John Frey, who came from Switzerland in 1877, and his wife Mary, had fifteen children. In 1902, their infant daughter Annie…

  • The Three Cemeteries That Grew Into One · 9.8 mi

    The quiet burying ground here at Monaville is really three small cemeteries that grew together over thirty-four years. According to Waller County cemetery records kept by the Waller County Historical Society, it began…

  • Kelly, Primus · 9.8 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the Navasota area, where Primus Kelly's story unfolded. He wasn't just a slave; he was a soldier. Kelly came to Texas in 1851 with his master, John W.S. West. When the Civil War broke out, West sent…

  • Witching For The Unmarked Graves · 9.8 mi

    Out in the old cemetery country around Monaville, folks have long used a trick borrowed from water-witching to find graves that lost their markers. It goes by names like grave dowsing or grave witching, and you will…

  • The House That Grew With The Family · 9.8 mi

    Out here near Monaville, in the quiet farm country of Waller County, stands a house that kept getting bigger. In late eighteen eighty-nine, a Swiss immigrant named John Frey settled this land with his German-born wife,…

  • Frey-Benignus House · 9.8 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the Frey-Benignus House, a testament to immigrant grit and family growth. Swiss immigrant John Frey and his German-born wife Mary settled here in late 1889. They started with a simple two-room house…

  • Monaville: The Town Named for a Storekeeper's Little Girl · 9.9 mi

    You're in Monaville, named in 1886 when Daniel C. Singletary opened the area's first post office and grocery store and named the community for his daughter Mona. The farming settlement had a school, a cotton gin, and…

  • Monaville Independent School District · 9.9 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past the area where Monaville's schools once served this rural community. Rural schools like Monaville, Aurora, and Bracy Island opened in the late 1800s, consolidating into the Monaville Independent…

  • Field's Store Community · 10.1 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving through Waller County, and just ahead is the site of Field's Store. Settlers were here before the Civil War, but in the early 1870s, Druey Holland Field and his wife Caroline opened a general store. This…

  • Harris County, TX · 10.2 mi

    Harris County is a melting pot of diverse cultures and ethnic heritages. As of 2023, it had the second largest population of Black Americans in the United States, behind only Cook County, Illinois, and the second…

  • The Jefferson Davis Highway Plan · 10.2 mi

    Several Texas highways carry an old honorary name, the Jefferson Davis Highway. It grew out of a plan conceived in nineteen thirteen and promoted by the United Daughters of the Confederacy: a coast to coast road named…

  • Fields Store Cemetery · 10.4 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving near Hempstead, in Waller County. This is Fields Store Cemetery, established during the Reconstruction period. It's the burial place for early settlers and their descendants, including veterans of five…

  • Waller County, TX · 10.5 mi · Local history

    Waller County, part of the Western Gulf Coastal Plain, owes its fertile lands to the alluvial deposits left by the Brazos River and its tributaries. This rich soil, combined with a long growing season, has made the area…

  • Lockhart Plantation · 10.7 mi · Historical Marker

    You're driving past what was once Lockhart Plantation, built in 1850 by Dr. John W. Lockhart. This wasn't just a home; it was a self-sufficient community on a thousand acres, complete with its own blacksmith shop,…

  • Waller County, TX · 11.2 mi

    Waller County's history is marked by significant racial controversies, particularly concerning voting rights. In 1971, the county's tax assessor and voter registrar prohibited students from Prairie View A&M University,…

  • The Female College on Poplar Street · 11.3 mi

    The Chappell Hill Historical Society Museum stands on old college ground. The Chappell Hill Institute opened here in 1850 on land donated by town founder Mary Haller and her husband; a second building went up in 1852…

  • St. Stanislaus: Built Three Times · 11.3 mi

    St. Stanislaus, organized in 1889, is one of the earliest Polish parishes in Texas -- and it would not stay down. Businessman William Swiatkowski went personally to the bishop in Galveston to ask for a church; the land,…

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