Harrison Barrett

The land lay on part of Reuben White's league east of the San Jacinto River, and Barrett paid fifty cents an acre for it in 1889; it became one of the largest holdings in Harris County acquired by a former slave. He helped build the first seven houses with lumber from his own land and set up a sawmill, a gristmill and a coffee mill. He gave neighbors open access to the fish and crayfish in the spring and gully near his home and donated land for Shiloh Baptist Church, which also served as the school.

What the plaque says

Harrison Barrett (ca. 1845-1917) Born into slavery, Harrison Barrett was the son of Simon and Eliza Barrett, who had come to Texas from Louisiana. In addition to Harrison, the couple had two other sons and two daughters. Following the emancipation of texas slaves in 1865, Harrison Barrett spent several years gathering his family together. He eventually found all except one sister, and they settled on land east of the San Jacinto River. He purchased this land in 1889 and began a community which would later be known as Barrett's settlement. Beginning with seven houses, the community grew to include additional homes, farms, and businesses. Considered the leader of the community, Barrett established a school, church, and cemetery. After a post office substation was opened here in 1947, the area became known as Barrett station. Married to the former Annie Jones soon after his emancipation, barrett was the father of twelve children. His homestead, twice rebuilt by descendants, still stands on its original location. Harrison and Annie Barrett, along with four other family members, are interred in the nearby family cemetery, named Journey's End by descendants in 1985. (1988)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• San Jacinto Battleground State Historic Site — 8.8 mi
  The 1,200 acres of coastal prairie and marsh where the Texas Revolution ended in eighteen minutes, and the 567-foot shaft of fossil-studded limestone that has stood over them since 1939.
• Sam Houston Park and the Heritage Society — 20 mi
  Ten historic buildings gathered in a downtown park below the skyscrapers, among them the 1870 house of the Reverend Jack Yates, built five years after emancipation.
• Emancipation Park — 20 mi
  The Third Ward park that freedpeople bought for Juneteenth in 1872, rebuilt in 2017 on Emancipation Avenue and still the center of the city's June 19 celebration.
• Buffalo Soldiers National Museum — 21 mi
  A 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.

More markers nearby

• Humphrey Jackson — 0.5 mi
• Humphrey and Sarah Merriman Jackson — 2.2 mi
• Lynch's Ferry — 6.1 mi
• Hannah Este Burnet — 7.5 mi