The Lively

The Lively reached the Brazos by mistake. Stephen F. Austin and Joseph Hawkins had fitted the thirty-ton schooner at New Orleans, and about twenty colonists under William W. Little sailed in late 1821 to meet Austin at the Colorado. Weather blew them off course, and they took the Brazos for the Colorado. They built a log house upriver and never met Austin's other settlers, and all but two or three went back to the United States. Austin assumed the ship lost, and a wreck story spread. The Lively did wreck on Galveston Island in 1822 on her second voyage.

What the plaque says

The Lively The Lively, first vessel with emigrants to Austin's colony landed here December 23, 1821. The Battle of Velasco was fought here June 26, 1832. Public and secret treaties of peace between the Republic of Texas and General Santa Anna were signed here May 14, 1836. Dedicated May 14, 1936.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Brazoria National Wildlife Refuge — 8.0 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.
• Levi Jordan Plantation State Historic Site — 21 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 — 26 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.
• Galveston Island State Park — 27 mi
  A cattle ranch willed to the state that now runs the full width of Galveston Island, from two miles of Gulf beach across dunes and prairie to the marshes of West Galveston Bay.

More markers nearby

• Old Quintana — 0.8 mi
• Old Velasco, C. S. A. — 1.0 mi
• Velasco — 1.0 mi
• Sinking Site of the Blockade Runner "Acadia" — 1.0 mi