Durazno Plantation

Durazno came out of Peach Point as a wedding present, and the Handbook of Texas keeps a thin but telling ledger of it. William Joel Bryan and Lavinia Perry married in April 1840, and the plantation raised cotton and cattle, adding sugar in the 1850s, though it made only one sugar crop between 1852 and 1858. By 1860 Bryan held thirty-eight enslaved people. During the war he fed Confederate troops at the mouth of the Brazos at his own expense. The property was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on September 2, 1980.

What the plaque says

Durazno Plantation Originally a part of Stephen F. Austin's 1828 Mexican land grant, Durazno (Spanish for "peach") plantation was willed by Austin to his sister, Emily Austin Bryan Perry, upon his death in December 1836. The property was deeded in 1847 to Emily's son, William Joel Bryan, who developed it into a cotton and sugar plantation. The land remained in the family until 1928, when it was purchased by Robert E. L. Stringfellow. Among the structures on the plantation were a main house, plantation office, log carriage house, barns and other outbuildings, and a number of slave cabins. (1991)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Brazoria National Wildlife Refuge — 11 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 — 12 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.
• Varner-Hogg Plantation State Historic Site — 18 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.

More markers nearby

• Gulf Prairie Cemetery — 1.9 mi
• William Joel Bryan — 1.9 mi
• Major James Peckham Caldwell — 1.9 mi
• Henry William Munson — 1.9 mi