Michael Moore Kennard

The colony the plaque says Kennard joined spent years in legal limbo. It began as a Nashville group's 1822 petition, became Robert Leftwich's 1825 contract for 800 families, and passed to Sterling C. Robertson's recruiting in 1830. That year Mexico's Law of April 6, 1830, barred his families from the grant, and they were allowed into Austin's colony instead. Austin and Samuel May Williams took the area in 1831; Robertson won it back in 1834 and issued the first title that October. Land offices closed in November 1835, and an 1847 court ruling credited him with 600 families.

What the plaque says

Michael Moore Kennard Born in Tennessee. In 1828 he and family joined Robertson's Colony, bound for Texas. Arrived in 1830, probably having stopped to "make a crop" along the way. Lived in present Grimes County; was granted a third of a league of land in Robertson's Colony. For his service in the Texas Revolution, received additional land in Menard and Leon Counties. His mercantile business-- firm of Fanthorp, Womack & Kennard-- was the first in Grimes County. (1971)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Fanthorp Inn State Historic Site — steps away
  A cedar-log dogtrot cabin of 1834 on the road through Anderson that grew into a seventeen-room inn and post office for travelers of the Republic, kept by one family until 1976.
• Navasota — 9.0 mi
  A railroad and cotton town where the La Bahia Road crossed the Navasota River, scarred by an 1865 explosion and yellow fever, and the home ground of the songster Mance Lipscomb.
• Star of the Republic Museum — 15 mi
  A star-shaped museum of the Republic of Texas years, 1836 to 1846, built at Washington-on-the-Brazos after a Brenham campaign and opened on March 1, 1970.
• Washington-on-the-Brazos State Historic Site — 15 mi
  The townsite on the Brazos where delegates met in a cold, unfinished hall in March 1836 to declare Texas independent, with Independence Hall rebuilt and Anson Jones's Barrington farm worked as in 1850.

More markers nearby

• Kenneth Lewis Anderson — steps away
• Fanthorp Inn — steps away
• Orphans Friend Lodge No. 17 Ancient Free & Accepted Masons — 0.4 mi
• Grimes County — 0.4 mi