Albert Sidney Johnston

Johnston's China Grove was cotton, fig and orange country before he owned it. Warren Hall planted the chinaberries that named the place, and Johnston and Albert Burnley bought it in 1843. Eliza Johnston lived about three years in a double log cabin here, painting birds and flowers in watercolor, and two of their children were born on the plantation. A mortgage they could not pay ended it, and it was sold at auction. Brazoria County plantations ran on enslaved labor, but the Handbook entries on China Grove and on Eliza Johnston name no one held here.

What the plaque says

Albert Sidney Johnston (February 2, 1803 -April 6, 1862) Kentucky native Albert Sidney Johnston graduated from the U. S. Military Academy at West Point in 1826. He was assigned to posts in New York and Missouri, and served in the Black Hawk War in 1832. He resigned his commission in 1834 to return to Kentucky to care for his dying wife. Johnston came to Texas in July 1836 and enlisted in the Republic army. A month later he was appointed adjutant general, and in January 1837 became senior brigadier general in command of the army. He was appointed secretary of war by President Mirabeau B. Lamar in December 1838. In 1840 Johnston returned to Kentucky, where he married Eliza Griffin in 1843. They settled at China Grove, Johnston's large plantation at this site, and continued to live here until 1849. During the Mexican war Johnston commanded a company of Texas volunteers. Later, as a colonel in the U. S. Army, he served on the Texas frontier and in the West. At the outbreak of the Civil War he resigned and was appointed a Confederate general by President Jefferson Davis. Johnston was killed at the Battle of Shiloh in 1862 and was buried in New Orleans. In 1867 he was reinterred in the State Cemetery in Austin. (1989)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Brazos Bend State Park — 10 mi
  Oak and pecan bottomland, lakes and alligators on the Brazos River 45 miles from downtown Houston, with the museum's George Observatory in the woods.
• Varner-Hogg Plantation State Historic Site — 15 mi
  A Brazos sugar plantation built by enslaved people for the Patton family, later leased convict labor and Hogg family oil, now told through Rachel Patton and Sarah Ford.
• Brazoria National Wildlife Refuge — 20 mi
  Coastal prairie, salt marsh and bays between Freeport and Christmas Bay, where an auto tour along Big Slough passes wintering geese, ducks and wading birds in the tens of thousands.
• Levi Jordan Plantation State Historic Site — 25 mi
  A sugar and cotton plantation on the San Bernard River whose enslaved builders and their descendants left one of the best-preserved African American archeological sites in Texas.

More markers nearby

• Sandy Point Cemetery — 4.8 mi
• Site of "Orozimbo" — 8.7 mi
• Nathan H. Haller — 10 mi
• First Baptist Church of Angleton — 10 mi