Sweeny Plantation

The house stands on private land inside an industrial plant, and no public route reaches it. The City of Sweeny's marker page says the people enslaved here lived in thirty cabins of cypress, and that the plantation had its own sawmill, sugar house, cotton gin, blacksmith shop, commissary and brick kiln. The house has since been considerably altered. A descendant, Catherine Bannister, lived there until her death in the 1970s, the city says. The wider family story is in the Handbook of Texas, which counts 250 enslaved people among those who came from Tennessee with the Sweenys in 1833.

What the plaque says

Sweeny Plantation John Sweeny, Jr., after returning from the Texas Revolution, was given this plantation by his father, an extensive landholder. In 1837 slaves built the house, using only brick, nails and wood made on his land. Molasses, cotton, sugar were produced. Still owned by descendants. (1965)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Levi Jordan Plantation State Historic Site — 8.5 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.
• Varner-Hogg Plantation State Historic Site — 9.1 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.
• Brazos Bend State Park — 23 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 — 27 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

• Sweeny Cemetery — 3.2 mi
• Thomas Jefferson Sweeny — 3.3 mi
• John Adriance — 7.7 mi
• Byrd Lockhart — 7.7 mi