Bayland Orphans Home

The home was nonsectarian, planned to care for and educate up to 250 children of dead Confederate soldiers, and it opened on August 13, 1867. Agents collected donations of every kind, and a small church from Harmony Grove was moved to the grounds as a schoolhouse. By 1878 the home owned a 328-acre farm. When the Houston-Galveston packet boats stopped running in 1887, Bayland became hard to reach, and the 1888 charter for the Houston home allowed it to take any White orphan from any county. The old site later became part of the Goose Creek oilfield.

What the plaque says

Bayland Orphans Home The Civil War shattered many families, leaving orphans, destitute widows, and children whose stepfathers were unable or unwilling to support them. Motivated by such conditions, Henry Gillette led a group who met in 1866 to form an orphanage for children of Confederate soldiers, which the Texas Legislature chartered on September 24 as "The Orphans Home at Bayland." A board of trustees organized on January 15, 1867 at the Houston home of Dr. John L. Bryan included Gillette, Bryan, and Rev. C. C. Preston, who had bought Bryan's property on the west bank of Goose Creek overlooking Tabbs Bay. This site, including a two-story brick house, became "The Orphans Homat at Bayland." Preston was the first superintendent but died in August 1867; he was succeeded by Gillette. Gillette's sister, Jeanette Duke, a Confederate widow with two young sons, became matron of the home in 1870. Dr. Ashbel Smith served as the home's physician. From two sisters enrolling in February 1866, the orphanage grew to serve 76 youths by 1870. The Orphans Home Cemetery, now unmarked, contains at least eight burials. In 1873, the state legislature granted the home more than 48,000 acres to sell for operating funds. Additional large gifts included land and stocks donated by William and J. J. Hendley of Galveston. By October 1886, the number of orphans had decreased to 37. Through the years, Houston was the site of most board meetings and support for the school, so in 1888, the board closed the Bayland site and relocated the home to 35 acres north of Houston (now in Woodland Heights). In Houston the home changed names, location, governance and mission but lives on today in Harris County's Burnett Bayland Rehabilitation Center. The original orphans home site in Bayland Park is remembered as the beginning of a story of charity and hope for young Texans. (1964, 2012)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• San Jacinto Battleground State Historic Site — 5.8 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.
• Space Center Houston — 13 mi
  The visitor center of NASA's Johnson Space Center at Clear Lake, with flown capsules, a shuttle replica riding a 747, and tram tours to Mission Control and a Saturn V.
• Emancipation Park — 22 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.
• Sam Houston Park and the Heritage Society — 23 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

• Ashbel Smith, M. D. — 1.9 mi
• Morgan's Point Cemetery — 2.4 mi
• Homesite (Point Pleasant) of William Scott — 2.7 mi
• Humble Oil & Refining Company — 2.9 mi