Site of Groce's Ferry

Bernardo, Jared Groce's plantation near this ferry site, is now a private ranch, and its ground has been read. Archaeologists working with the Texas Historical Commission scanned it with radar and magnetometers, finding likely foundations and intact deposits. By 2009 digging had recovered brick and sandstone fireplaces, nails, glass, ceramic shards, bullets, buttons and coins, displayed at the Sam Houston Memorial Museum in Huntsville. The enslaved workers built the cabins, and the main house was dismantled in 1866. The ranch is private, with no public access.

What the plaque says

Site of Groce's Ferry Established across the Brazos in 1822 (the river has since changed its course) by Jared E. Groce (1782-1836). Near here the Texas Army camped from March 30 to April 12, 1836. Erected by the State of Texas 1936

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• San Felipe de Austin State Historic Site — 15 mi
  Stephen F. Austin's colonial capital on a Brazos bluff, the town of the Consultation and the first Texas newspapers, burned by its own garrison in the Runaway Scrape of 1836.
• Star of the Republic Museum — 21 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 — 21 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.
• Independence and Old Baylor Park — 26 mi
  A crossroads north of Brenham that was the richest town in Texas when it won Baylor University in 1845, refused the railroad, and lost the college to Waco and Belton in 1886.

More markers nearby

• Hempstead High School — 4.4 mi
• Waller County — 4.9 mi
• Former Waller County Post Offices — 4.9 mi
• Hempstead, C.S.A. — 4.9 mi