Foster Community

Foster had a post office by 1882, and two years later semiweekly mail, a steam gristmill and cotton gin, a physician and sixty people. By 1892 the mail came daily and there were three gristmills, and a general store and a flour mill had been added by 1896. In 1897 there were two schools, one for White and one for Black students. The town was known for its pecans in 1914. Only forty people remained in 1925, and in 1931 a single business was reported, though two community schools and a blacktop road served Foster in 1936.

What the plaque says

Foster Community The Foster community began in the fall of 1821 as a permanent campsite settled by Randolph Foster (1790-1887) on what was then one of the largest single land grants in Texas (11,601 acres). The John Foster grant, deeded by Stephen F. Austin, came from the relationship between Foster, his father John (1757-1837) and Austin. John was one of Austin's "Old Three Hundred" colonists, and Foster family members participated in the Texas War for Independence. Sugar cane was the area's dominant industry in the 1840s, and Foster community thrived from its production and export. Other crops that benefited the community included pecans and cotton. Local residents tamed wild horses found on the upland prairies for domestic use and trade. The community's first school, which offered up to grade five, was held in Randolph Foster's home before construction of a one-room schoolhouse also used for early community religious services. African American students studied at Jones Creek School. The community's first post office initiated mail service from the area's general store in 1882. The volume of local sugar production was so great that in the 1920s, Imperial Sugar Company built a railroad between Foster community and mills in Sugar Land. In 1928, Sugar Land Industries bought acreage in this area and named it Foster Farms. By the end of World War II, several factors led to the community's decline: the end of area sugar crops; the closing of the railroad; the Great Depression; and changes in ownership and farming techniques. In 1944, the community's schools, post office and general store closed. Today, adjacent to Houston, the state's largest urban area, Foster exists in memory as a pioneer Texas community. (2005)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Brazos Bend State Park — 23 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.
• The Menil Collection — 27 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 — 27 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.
• Museum of Fine Arts, Houston — 27 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.

More markers nearby

• John Foster Land Grant — 1.3 mi
• Randolph Foster — 1.4 mi
• Randon & Pennington Grant of 1824 — 3.3 mi
• Site of Thompson's Ferry — 3.7 mi