The Fitzgerald and Fenn Families

The plaque brings David Fitzgerald to Texas in 1821; the Handbook adds that Austin nearly sent him away. A widower past fifty, Fitzgerald paddled a canoe up the Brazos in January 1822 with his son John and two enslaved people, and settled three miles below Richmond. In October 1823 Austin wrote that he had made Fitzgerald and four other men leave the colony as fugitives from justice in the United States. Austin apparently relented, and Fitzgerald received title to his league on July 10, 1824. By 1850 Jonathan Dawson Waters owned the whole league as his Arcola plantation.

What the plaque says

The Fitzgerald and Fenn Families David Fitzgerald, a veteran of the American Revolution and the War of 1812, came to Texas from Georgia in 1821.His son-in-law, Eli Fenn, followed in 1832. Fenn served during the Texas Revolution and signed the 1837 petition for the creation of Fort Bend County. An expert in natural remedies, his wife Sarah aided sick residents. One of their sons, John R. Fenn, was a war veteran, Duke's first Postmaster and a businessman. His wife, Rebecca (Williams), was a charter member of the Daughters of the Republic of Texas. F.M.O. Fenn, John and Rebecca's eldest child, served as County Attorney and later as Justice of the Peace. In 1893, the Sons of the Republic of Texas organized in his office in Richmond. Sarah, John R. and Rebecca Fenn are buried in the Duke Cemetery. (2008)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Brazos Bend State Park — 12 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.
• Museum of Fine Arts, Houston — 16 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.
• The Menil Collection — 16 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.
• Rothko Chapel — 16 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

• Duke Community — steps away
• St. John Missionary Baptist Church — 6.3 mi
• Almeda — 7.4 mi
• Stafford Municipal School District — 7.6 mi