James Tarrant Pattison Homesite

James Tarrant Pattison bought much of William Heady's Mexican grant in 1839 and built his house on a hill, with a gin, a gristmill, a sawmill and a racetrack. Family lore says the town took its name from a horse race between Pattison and a rival planter, a story the plaque leaves out. The George Parker Church stood nearby by 1854. The Handbook of Texas does not say who did the work on these acres, though by 1845 about 200 white residents on the east bank of the Brazos held more than 1,000 enslaved people.

What the plaque says

James Tarrant Pattison Homesite Located at important junction of Atascosito Road and the San Felipe Trail, this homesite was established by James Tarrant and Sarah Smith Pattison on their Republic of Texas land grant, and became a stagecoach stop. Their plantation of 5,000 acres had its own grist mill, sawmill, and cotton gin. The first church and school in the community were founded through the efforts of Pattison. Town developed here before 1854 was named by a son, George Madison, for the original settler, James Tarrant Pattison (1810-72). Heirs still live here. (1971)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• San Felipe de Austin State Historic Site — 6.2 mi
  Stephen F. Austin's colonial capital on a Brazos bluff, the town of the Consultation and the first Texas newspapers, burned by its own garrison in the Runaway Scrape of 1836.
• Attwater Prairie Chicken National Wildlife Refuge — 20 mi
  Ten thousand acres of native coastal prairie northeast of Eagle Lake, kept for a critically endangered grouse, many of whose birds are hatched in captivity and released here.

More markers nearby

• Isaac Best — 0.8 mi
• Judge Edwin Waller — 2.3 mi
• Kellner Townsite — 3.1 mi
• Captain Nathen Brookshire — 3.7 mi