Near Site of the First Capitol of the Republic of Texas

Columbia was named a meeting place before anyone called it a capital. L. W. Kemp's 1944 study notes that Burnet's proclamation of July 23, 1836, set Columbia for the first Congress without declaring it the seat of government. The House sat in a one-and-a-half-story building Leman Kelsey had occupied, and the Senate across the road in a two-story store once used by White and Knight. The Senate's building was torn down in 1888. Houston photographer F. E. Beach photographed the surviving building in 1897, and the Daughters of the Republic of Texas set a granite marker in 1932.

What the plaque says

Near Site of the First Capitol of the Republic of Texas About 1833 Leman Kelsey built a story-and-a-half clapboard structure near this location. When Columbia became capital of the Republic of Texas in 1836, the building was one of two which housed the newly formed government. The first Republic of Texas Congress convened in Columbia. Here Sam Houston took office as president and Stephen F. Austin as secretary of state. In 1837 the government moved to Houston. The 1900 storm destroyed the original capitol. The replica at this site was built in 1976-77. (1979)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Varner-Hogg Plantation State Historic Site — 1.3 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 — 10 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 — 16 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

• Columbia Rosenwald School — 0.2 mi
• Columbia (First Capital of Texas) — 0.3 mi
• Columbia — 0.4 mi
• Old Columbia Cemetery — 0.4 mi