Historical Marker
Edward R. and Ann Taylor
Houston, Harris County · Texas
Erected 2002
The oil the plaque mentions lay over a buried salt dome. A U.S. Geological Survey guidebook describes a slight mound where shallow borings found gas, and the Handbook says Ed Taylor found gas in his own water well, with drilling that brought oil in 1906. The first fifty-four holes failed; the salt lay about 630 feet down, and most oil came from 3,500 to 4,600 feet. Through 1984 the field yielded more than 88.7 million barrels. Today the homestead is a 27-acre city park with a loop trail and a wetland overlook.
What the plaque says
Edward R. and Ann Taylor Edward R. and Ann Taylor Edward Ruthven Taylor, born in August 1845 at Independence, Texas, moved with parents Edward Wyllys and Aaroline Taylor to Houston in 1848. Here, in the city's formative years, the family made an impact in the cotton business and in the public education system. At the start of the Civil War, Edward Ruthven attended private school in New York. In 1862, at age 16, he returned to Texas and joined Waul's Texas Legion. He served with the unit at the battle of Vicksburg, Mississippi, where he was captured. While held as a prisoner of war, he contracted tuberculosis and the Legion later discharged him from service. As he recuperated at home, Edward became close to one of his family's slaves, a girl named Ann. Some sources indicate Ann came from Hungerford, Texas, and slave papers list her name as Ann George. Edward and Ann fell in love and unofficially married, as interracial marriages were not legal in Texas at the time. At the age of 25, Edward moved to Myrtle, later known as Pierce Junction, with Ann and their first child, Pinkie. Establishing a farm of more than 600 acres, the family grew, and Ann and Edward had five more surviving children: Major Julius, Samuel, William E., Nettie C., and Burt Taylor. In 1903, Edward deeded half of his property to Ann. She lived until 1909 and is buried on the original Taylor homestead with three children who did not reach adulthood. A few years before Ann's death, the family became aware of potential oil deposits on their land. In 1921, the Pierce Junction field had its first substantial oil strike. The oil rush continued beyond Edward's death in 1924, and his children, given equal shares of the property, continued to maintain the land and its resources. Family members donated the original homestead to the City of Houston in 1986. (2003)
Where it stands
29.65293, -95.40133 · Directions
Worth the stop nearby
- Museum of Fine Arts, Houston — 5.1 miThe 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 — 5.8 miJohn 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 — 5.9 miAn 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.
- Buffalo Soldiers National Museum — 5.9 miA 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.