William Jones Elliot Heard and Egypt Plantation

In March 1836 Egypt became a refuge. During the Runaway Scrape many families from west of the Colorado gathered here, hoping Sam Houston's army, camped just upstream, would keep Mexican troops from crossing the river. The army moved on, and Heard went with it. In May, after San Jacinto, Gen. Thomas J. Rusk set temporary headquarters at Egypt while Texans followed the retreating Mexican force. The planters of Egypt, Heard among them, grew cotton and sugar with enslaved labor, and the Handbook of Texas lists enslaved people among Heard's holdings in 1840.

What the plaque says

William Jones Elliot Heard and Egypt Plantation William Jones Elliot Heard was born in Tennessee in 1801, the first of Stephen R. and Jemima M. Heard's nine children. Sometime in the 1820s Heard moved to Alabama where he married America Morton. Heard received a land certificate from Stephen F. Austin in 1830 and in 1832 settled here on 2,222 acres he acquired from John C. Clark, one of Austin's "Old 300" settlers. The area's rich soil prompted early settlers to name their town for the biblical Egypt and later to refer to Heard's property as "Egypt Plantation." On April 21, 1836, about a month after Egypt Plantation had narrowly escaped destruction at the hands of the advancing Mexican army, Heard commanded Company F in San Houston's army at the Battle of San Jacinto. After the war, Heard built a cotton gin at Egypt Plantation and raised cattle, cotton, corn, and sugar cane. He registered his first cattle brand in 1837. In 1840 he joined Colonel John H. Moore in a campaign against the Indians in the upper Colorado River area. In 1846 Heard was elected chief justice of Wharton County. He died in 1874 and was buried in the Masonic cemetery at Chappell Hill in Washington County. A red brick residence built here by Heard in 1849-54 had by the early 1990s housed six generations of his family. (1993)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Attwater Prairie Chicken National Wildlife Refuge — 18 mi
  Ten thousand acres of native coastal prairie northeast of Eagle Lake, kept for a critically endangered grouse, many of whose birds are hatched in captivity and released here.
• Stafford Opera House — 28 mi
  A cattleman's bank and theater of 1886 on the Columbus square, in a river town Sam Houston burned in 1836 and a county marked by a long feud and a 1935 lynching.

More markers nearby

• Community of Egypt — steps away
• Glen Flora — 4.6 mi
• Nada — 9.0 mi
• Wharton Training School — 9.3 mi