Rosenberg

Henry Rosenberg was born at Bilten in the Swiss canton of Glarus in 1824 and went to work in a textile factory at seventeen. He followed John Hessly, his employer's son, to Galveston in February 1843 as a clerk in Hessly's dry-goods store, bought into it, owned it within three years and by 1859 had built it into the leading dry-goods store in the state. He was Swiss consul for Texas from 1869 until his death, ran his own bank and presided over the Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe while it laid its first fifty miles of track.

What the plaque says

Rosenberg Founded on a site in original Mexican land grant of early settler Henry Scott, where a small, nameless shipping point existed on the Brazos early as 1830. The Buffalo Bayou, Brazos & Colorado Railroad had tracks here before 1860. Town developed after the Gulf, Colorado & Santa Fe Railroad arrived in 1880, built a station where it crossed the B. B. B. & C., and in 1883 bought and platted a 200-acre site with a central square between the Brazos and the railroad. Town was named for Henry Rosenberg of Galveston, a financial backer and president of G. C. & S. F. Count Joseph telfener, an Italian investor, set up offices here in 1881 to build New York, Texas & Mexican Railway, which extended to Victoria. R. T. Mulcahy, called "Father of Rosenberg," arrived in 1883, and for 40 years promoted schools, business, and government. First newspaper, "The Silver X-Ray," was founded in 1895. Methodist and Baptist churches were active before 1900 when town was incorporated. In 1912 came city water and electric lights, and chartering of a Boy Scout troop (one of the first in Texas). Oil and sulphur discoveries and highway development after 1920 have made Rosenberg a center of trade and steady growth. (1970)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• 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.
• The Menil Collection — 28 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.
• Museum of Fine Arts, Houston — 28 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.
• Rothko Chapel — 28 mi
  An octagonal chapel open to all faiths, built by the de Menils around fourteen dark canvases by Mark Rothko, with Barnett Newman's Broken Obelisk standing in the pool outside.

More markers nearby

• Trone-Ray-Lane House — 0.5 mi
• Taylor Ray — 0.5 mi
• First Baptist Church of Rosenberg — 0.7 mi
• Holy Rosary Catholic Parish — 0.8 mi