Allen Ranch

Samuel William Allen was not related to the Allen brothers who founded Houston. Born in Frankfort, Kentucky, in 1826, he married Rebecca Jane Thomas, daughter of Ezekiel Thomas, in Harris County in 1844. Allen and Poole, his Galveston firm, became the largest cattle shippers in Southeast Texas, and he later went into a cattle partnership with Abel Head (Shanghai) Pierce, buying Pierce out for $110,000 in 1871. When the Galveston, Houston and Henderson Railroad opened in 1860 it stopped at Allen's private station, Dumont, a name kept by the South Houston depot. He is buried in Glendale Cemetery.

What the plaque says

Allen Ranch This busy commercial area was once part of the Allen Ranch, one of the oldest and largest ranches in southeast Texas. A portion of the land was granted to Morris Callahan in 1824 by Mexico and inherited by his niece Rebecca Jane Thomas (d. 1919), who married Samuel William Allen (1826-1888) in 1844. Allen bought additional land, including a 1300-acre tract belonging to his friend Governor Francis R. Lubbock, and began operation of a prosperous cattle ranch. He helped organize the firm of Allen & Poole to ship cattle to eastern and foreign markets. Samuel Ezekiel Allen (1848-1913) took over operation of the ranch from his father in 1881. He and his wife Rosa Lum (d. 1931) built a large home near the junction of Buffalo Bayou and Sims Bayou (1 mi. N). Allen was a leading Houston businessman as well as a cattleman. At the time he died, Allen's property included 13,000 acres in Harris County and 10,000 acres in Brazoria County. In 1917, Rosa Allen sold 700 acres to the Sinclair Oil Company (now Atlantic Richfield Corporation) as a refinery site. The remaining land was later divided for industrial, commercial, and residential use. The ranch house was moved to Galveston Bay, where it became Camp Allen of the Episcopal Diocese of Texas. (1976)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• San Jacinto Battleground State Historic Site — 8.7 mi
  The 1,200 acres of coastal prairie and marsh where the Texas Revolution ended in eighteen minutes, and the 567-foot shaft of fossil-studded limestone that has stood over them since 1939.
• Emancipation Park — 8.9 mi
  The Third Ward park that freedpeople bought for Juneteenth in 1872, rebuilt in 2017 on Emancipation Avenue and still the center of the city's June 19 celebration.
• Buffalo Soldiers National Museum — 9.7 mi
  A museum in Houston's 1925 Light Guard Armory that tells the service of Black soldiers from the Revolutionary War onward, built from one veteran's thirty years of collecting.
• Sam Houston Park and the Heritage Society — 9.7 mi
  Ten historic buildings gathered in a downtown park below the skyscrapers, among them the 1870 house of the Reverend Jack Yates, built five years after emancipation.

More markers nearby

• City of Pasadena — 0.6 mi
• Crown Hill Cemetery — 0.6 mi
• Near Site of Isaac Batterson Home — 1.9 mi
• Glendale Cemetery — 3.4 mi