Thomas Jefferson Sweeny

Thomas Jefferson Sweeny belonged to a family that, by the Handbook's account of various sources, came from Tennessee in 1833 with 250 enslaved people. He and his brother William had bought land grants near the future townsite in exchange for a load of mules. The City of Sweeny records his San Jacinto service in Captain Patton's Columbia Company and his discharge on February 6, 1837. It also lists a headright of a third of a league in 1838, and a 640-acre donation certificate and 320-acre bounty certificate from 1841. He died in La Grange.

What the plaque says

Thomas Jefferson Sweeny A San Jacinto veteran Born in Tennessee 1812 Died in La Grange, Texas 1869 Erected by the State of Texas 1936

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Levi Jordan Plantation State Historic Site — 5.2 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 — 9.2 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 — 24 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 — 25 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 — steps away
• Sweeny Plantation — 3.3 mi
• John Adriance — 7.5 mi
• John S. D. Byrom — 7.5 mi