Mamie and A.P. George

The ranch came to Mamie through her family: Henry Jones, one of the Old Three Hundred, settled it in 1824, and it was enlarged by his daughter, Mary (Polly) Ryon, and by J. H. P. Davis, Mamie's father. The Georges built their holdings past 22,000 acres, and oil and gas fields were found on the ranch in 1923 and 1931. They had no children. Starting the foundation with $10,000, they grew it through cattle sales, and its first gifts paid for the Polly Ryon Memorial Hospital in Richmond in 1947. By 1993 its assets were $73.8 million.

What the plaque says

Mamie and A.P. George Both descendants of early Texas settlers, Mary Elizabeth "Mamie" Davis (1877-1971) and Albert Peyton George (1873-1955) supported and served Richmond and Fort Bend County through a legacy of ranching and philanthropy. After they married in 1896, they decided to move to the old Ryon family homestead and built a folk Victorian cottage, completed in 1899 and remodeled in 1911. A.P. and Mamie managed ranching and farming interests, gaining special notice for developing the Brahorn cattle bread. Through generous financial support, the Georges were the driving force behind many community projects. The couple established the George Foundation in 1945 to benefit the people of Fort Bend County. (2019)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Brazos Bend State Park — 9.3 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.
• Varner-Hogg Plantation State Historic Site — 23 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.
• Museum of Fine Arts, Houston — 24 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.
• The Menil Collection — 24 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.

More markers nearby

• Booth — 3.2 mi
• Mrs. Jane Herbert Wilkinson Long — 5.5 mi
• Concord Cemetery — 5.8 mi
• Site of the Home of Mirabeau B. Lamar — 7.1 mi