Levi Jordan came to Texas in 1848 with his wife Sarah, his daughter Emily and her husband James McNeill, four grandchildren, and twelve enslaved people. He bought a half league of mostly uncleared woods and prairie on the San Bernard River, and the enslaved workers built the plantation house, their own quarters, and a sugar mill said to be the largest in the county. In 1854 they raised a two-story Greek Revival house of yellow longleaf pine shipped from Florida and barged up the San Bernard, hand-hewing the sills and studs from local oak and making the bricks for its fireplaces.
Brazoria County was sugar country. In 1852, when Texas made more than 11,000 hogsheads of sugar, the county produced three-quarters of it, and its prosperity was built by enslaved men and women. The people of the Jordan place stayed after emancipation as sharecroppers until they were forced off the land in 1892.
What they left in the ground is why the site matters. The 92 acres the state holds, of an original 2,200, are one of the best-preserved archeological properties tied to African Americans in Texas. In 2023 the Texas Historical Commission was building an archeology lab and learning center here and planning a visitors center and museum shaped by an advisory committee of experts in African American history.
The closest stops worth working into your route
Roadside plaques and monuments within a short detour