Booth

The ground was first part of the Henry Jones league in Stephen F. Austin's colony. Booth was a major county landowner, and along with the store, lumberyard and syrup mill he ran a cotton gin. The post office opened in 1894, and two years later the town had a Baptist church, a school and about 150 people; by 1914 it had a bank and telephone service. In 1926 the Booth schools taught eighty-five White and 177 Black students. The population had dropped to forty by 1949, and was estimated at sixty in 1990.

What the plaque says

Booth Freeman Irby (F.I.) Booth came in 1885 to Richmond, where he met and wed Mildred Ryon Wheat in 1889. They purchased land and built a home here. In the 1890s, Booth brought 30 families from South Carolina to work the land, planting cotton, corn and rice. These families built houses and the Mt. Zion Church, and the settlement grew. By the early 1900s, the town had a post office, sawmill, lumberyard and cane syrup mill, and the Booth Public School operated from 1908 to 1947. The Gulf, Colorado & Santa Fe Railroad served the town; local products included sugar cane and cattle. F.I. Booth died in 1931, and the town's economic focus gradually changed. Its early agricultural foundation is still remembered. (2003)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Brazos Bend State Park — 11 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.
• Museum of Fine Arts, Houston — 21 mi
  The oldest art museum in Texas, grown from a 1900 schoolroom art league into a campus of Watkin, Mies van der Rohe and later buildings, with Ima Hogg's Bayou Bend up the bayou.
• The Menil Collection — 21 mi
  John and Dominique de Menil's free museum in Montrose: a grey-sided Renzo Piano building among bungalows, holding antiquities, Surrealism and art of Oceania under natural light.
• Rothko Chapel — 21 mi
  An octagonal chapel open to all faiths, built by the de Menils around fourteen dark canvases by Mark Rothko, with Barnett Newman's Broken Obelisk standing in the pool outside.

More markers nearby

• Mamie and A.P. George — 3.2 mi
• Mrs. Jane Herbert Wilkinson Long — 5.0 mi
• St. John Missionary Baptist Church — 5.4 mi
• Sugar Land Independent School District No. 17 — 6.6 mi