John Adriance

Adriance came up the Brazos from New York in October 1835, partly for his health, and stayed nearly seven decades. He clerked and then traded as a merchant at Columbia, in a firm that marketed cotton and shared a plantation, and he worked in the Confederate commissary there during the war. Afterward he sold real estate with his son and spent three years running the immigration department of the International-Great Northern Railroad. In the Thirteenth Legislature he helped shape the founding of Texas A&M, Prairie View and the University of Texas, and he later sat on A&M's board.

What the plaque says

John Adriance (November 10, 1816 - December 7, 1903) Faithful soldier, Texas War for Independence. He was in unit of Capt. Jacob Eberly, detailed by Gen. Sam Houston to guard Bell's Landing (East Columbia) until civilians could escape in front of Santa Anna's army. He and 15 others then hurried to rejoin Gen. Houston, only to find Battle of San Jacinto had been won on April 21, 1836. Adriance married Lydia Ann Cook, Watertown, New York, Sept. 24, 1846. Had three children. (1970)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Varner-Hogg Plantation State Historic Site — 1.7 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.
• Levi Jordan Plantation State Historic Site — 9.8 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.
• Brazos Bend State Park — 17 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.
• Brazoria National Wildlife Refuge — 21 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.

More markers nearby

• Byrd Lockhart — steps away
• John S. D. Byrom — steps away
• Nathaniel C. Hazen — steps away
• Samuel Tubbs Angier, M.D. — steps away