Old Oakland Plantation

Oakland outlived its founder by decades. After Henry Munson died in 1833, his widow Ann kept the plantation running, and the Handbook of Texas calls it a cotton and sugar plantation on Gulf Prairie. Its fields were worked by enslaved people. A family history says Ann and her second husband, James Caldwell, left for Hays County in 1852, and that the Munson sons ran Oakland together, one as resident manager and one as the family's curator, sharing the profits. By 1974 only St. Joseph Church, a cemetery and scattered houses remained. The marker stands beside a private road.

What the plaque says

Old Oakland Plantation Founded 1828 by Henry Wm. Munson, who bought site from Stephen F. Austin, Father of Texas. This land joined Peach Point Plantation, Austin's home. Munson, one of Texans in uprising over injustices at Anahuac and Velasco in 1832, died in yellow fever epidemic in 1833. (1965)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Levi Jordan Plantation State Historic Site — 8.8 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.
• Brazoria National Wildlife Refuge — 13 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.
• Varner-Hogg Plantation State Historic Site — 15 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.

More markers nearby

• Ellerslie Plantation — steps away
• Major Reuben R. Brown — 1.9 mi
• William Joel Bryan — 1.9 mi
• Major James Peckham Caldwell — 1.9 mi