Brazos County

The plaque tells how the county was named and moved. The Handbook adds who lived in it. The 1850 census counted 466 White people and 148 enslaved people. By 1860, when the railroad reached Millican, the county held 1,713 White residents and 1,063 enslaved people, and cotton had grown from 142 bales in 1850 to 2,269. Of 118 slaveholders, seventy-seven held fewer than five people and four held more than fifty. In 1861 the county voted 215 to 44 for secession.

What the plaque says

Brazos County Brazos County, part of Stephen F. Austin's colony, was created from Washington County in 1841. It was first named Navasota County, with Boonville as the county seat. In 1842 the name was changed to Brazos County. Through the Civil War, Millican, located at the end of the railroad from Houston, was a major town. When the railroad was continued through the county, Bryan became the county seat in 1866. The Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas (Texas A&M) opened in 1876 and College Station grew around it, incorporating in 1938. [original 1936 text: A part of the Municipality of Austin, 1828, Municipality of Washington, December, 1837, Created as Navasota County, January 30, 1841, Name changed to Brazos, January 28, 1842. Organized as Brazos County, February 6, 1843. First railroad reached Millican in 1860. County seat, Boonville 1841-1866. Bryan, since]

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• George H.W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum — 5.5 mi
  The library of the forty-first president on the Texas A&M campus, opened in 1997, where George and Barbara Bush and their daughter Robin are buried in a family plot on the grounds.
• Independence and Old Baylor Park — 25 mi
  A crossroads north of Brenham that was the richest town in Texas when it won Baylor University in 1845, refused the railroad, and lost the college to Waco and Belton in 1886.
• Navasota — 26 mi
  A railroad and cotton town where the La Bahia Road crossed the Navasota River, scarred by an 1865 explosion and yellow fever, and the home ground of the songster Mance Lipscomb.
• Fanthorp Inn State Historic Site — 27 mi
  A cedar-log dogtrot cabin of 1834 on the road through Anderson that grew into a seventeen-room inn and post office for travelers of the Republic, kept by one family until 1976.

More markers nearby

• Harvey Mitchell — steps away
• Town Named for William Joel Bryan — steps away
• Brazos County Confederate Commissioners Court — steps away
• John N. Johnson — steps away